All the King's Men
by Kade Riggs
Summary: Sequel to All the King's Horses. Riddick knew it was too easy. There was no way he could settle down and lead a peaceful, quiet life for the rest of his days. To his family's horror, he was right. Riddick,Jack.
1. Chapter 1

**Hugely Important Author's Note:** This story is a sequel to my story "All the King's Horses." I highly recommend reading that story first. :-)

**Disclaimer: **Any and all Pitch Black references do not belong to me. However, all of my original characters and references DO belong to me and may not be used without my express permission, as I do use them in some of my original work. Thank you.

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Once upon a time a wanted criminal named Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer, crash landed on a planet with no name, just a designation. That planet was known as T2, and the ship was the Hunter Grazner. Riddick wasn't an evil man. He was, however, entirely selfish.

Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer, died on T2 when a girl called him back to the only light shining in an unending darkness.

Many years passed, and now Riddick introduces himself as Richard B. Riddick, security consultant, husband, father.

_How things have changed..._ a cynical part of his mind whispered.

Riddick glanced up at his reflection in the mirror over the sink, and for just a second he glimpsed the image of a young man with fierce silver eyes. His chest clinched painfully with something between fear and exhilaration. Then, the image faded, replaced by the visage of an older man. The same caramel skin remained taunt across a sturdy jaw and the smooth planes of his cheeks, but tiny lines marked the passage of time at the corners of his eyes. The once fierce silver of his eyes had returned to their native hazel-brown.

He looked away from the glass, clearing his throat and straightening his collar. Yes, things certainly had changed.

Now if only he could learn to fix his own damn tie...

"Jack?" he called in the general direction of the master bedroom.

No answer.

Riddick walked out of the bathroom, his shoes clicking on the tile until he stepped onto the off-white carpet of the room he shared with his wife. He didn't find her standing there getting dressed, so odds were he'd find her in the kitchen, making breakfast for him and the kids.

Sure enough, he found her in the kitchen, slaving away in the loosest sense of the term. His approach didn't startle her. Even though he could stalk her without making a sound, Jack always seemed to sense him.

"Morning, hon," she called over her shoulder, deftly catching on a plate the two pieces of toast that flew out at her from a toaster their oldest son Cam had built for her in an elementary electronics class. She popped two more in before turning, catching him staring at her.

He smiled, placing a hand on the counter behind him and leaning on it. "Have I told you yet today that you're gorgeous?"

One of Jack's eyebrows rose, a smile threatened at the corner of her mouth. He could see the delicate muscles of her face struggle to keep her lips in a straight line. "Tie problems?" she asked, the suppressed smile bleeding into her voice.

His grin grew even bigger. "Because you are—absolutely—beautiful."

She relented, smiling in return at their familiar joke, and crossed the room to stand in front of him. Her deft fingers made quick work of the knot. "One more month," she said, marveling. "In four weeks we'll have been married over twenty years. I don't think even Imam would've thought we'd last so long."

When she turned those stunning green eyes, lined in black with long thick lashes, up to look at him, Riddick felt his heart hitch in his chest. He couldn't disagree. Not even Imam-the-eternal-optimist would've dared predict such astounding success for the marriage of a teenage runaway and an ex-convict. Jack wouldn't have fucked it up, either. It would've been all him. Twenty years and no deal-breaking blunders on his part. Maybe God liked him after all.

Then again, what could he possibly do to drive Jack away? She'd seen the worst of him, and yet a connection had always existed between them. In Jack's youth it was easy banter, the commonality of a crappy upbringing. Somewhere along the way it became something far more substantial; stronger than any chain, and more delicate than a silk thread. A stolen kiss, quick hug, or even lovemaking came so easily to both of them, but Riddick rarely allowed himself truly tender moments, even with Jack--moments where they did nothing but feel along that connection and find each other at the other end.

Riddick's large hands rose from his sides to lightly touch Jack's shoulders, his palms rubbing small circles while he lowered his forehead to touch hers. Jack's beautiful eyes fell shut and she leaned into him, taking a deep breath through her nose that whistled a little on the way out. After drifting off to sleep to that sound for so many years, he found quiet comfort in hearing it. The need to feel more of her led to his hands gently squeezing her thin but firm biceps, bringing her closer so her front pressed against his. Riddick found her face and cupped it in his palm, the pad of his thumb stroking gently over her cheek bone. Out of habit his lips began to seek hers before he restrained himself, swallowing hard and gritting his teeth behind closed lips. His heart started double timing its rhythm, and his breath tried to catch in his lungs. He didn't know how she did this to him, but his chest felt too small for the feelings trying to press up and out of him to the point of physical pain. Feelings that burned with such intensity that sometimes they scared the hell out of him.

Thoughts of carrying her back to their bedroom and ripping her clothes off paraded across his inner eye, but he kept them to himself. It took such careful control to hold her close without acting on those impulses, but he welcomed the challenge.

"We worked hard and built something nice for ourselves, Jackie-girl," Riddick said when he got better control of his lung function, his voice falling impossibly low. He'd lost the thread of their previous conversation and had to guess at what words would make an appropriate response. "Twenty or thirty more years of uncomfortable clothes and we might actually get to enjoy it."

She laughed softly, grabbing him by his freshly knotted tie and pulling him down for a short kiss, releasing him from their poignant moment. Just then the second round of toast flew out of the toaster and onto the counter top. Jack turned to get it, but Riddick held onto her wrist and snapped her back to him, looking smug.

"The kids ain't even up yet," he said, smoothing her hair back with a large open palm before he kissed her again, much more deeply this time. He literally felt everything melt out of her until she became boneless in his arms, sharing that kiss.

"Stop it, stop it right now!" screamed Rachel, their middle child and token teenage daughter. Apparently she'd just rushed into the room, because everything about her stood in atypical disarray; from her tangled shoulder-length hair, to the rumpled light pink pajamas she wore. Her fair cheeks had turned red under her sprinkling of freckles. "No more children out of you two! Not until I move out of the house! Kyle is the devil!"

Jack's eyes flickered open when Riddick's lips left hers. He wondered if her whole body tingled the way his did after one of their world-about-to-end over-the-top kisses. Judging by the fact that he still supported a decent percentage of her weight, he suspected she definitely felt something of that nature.

Riddick gave Jack a look of mocking confusion. "Kyle, Kyle? Do we know a Kyle, Jack?"

She returned the look before glancing over at her daughter. "I don't know. Who's Kyle, sweetheart? Is he a boy at school? You know what we've said about dating. You have to wait until you're sixteen, just like Cameron did."

Rachel's lightly freckled face turned bright red with fury and she let out a wail of frustration. "You know damn well who I'm talking about! Your demon spawn. Oh my God, I swear I was adopted!"

Just then Cameron Riddick--tall and handsome with a perpetual dark tan--made his entrance, immediately bee-lining for the toast. "Hey, what's all the yelling about?" he asked, looking and sounding far too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the son Riddick knew.

Not far behind him came their youngest. A four-year-old who stood a little more than three and a half feet tall, weighed forty pounds, and had a shock of dirty blond hair that contrasted sharply with both Rachel's head of strawberry brown hair and Cameron's brown/black locks. Kyle constantly ran around the house with his arms straight up in the air in imitation of an alien or monster.

Today, he was pretending to be a monster. He zoomed into the kitchen faster than lightening yelling, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" His arms were up, his left palm open, his right clutching a tube of red lipstick. Lipstick that he'd used to paint warrior stripes all over his face and arms.

Riddick immediately recognized the tube as Rachel's favorite color of dark red. She'd nagged him to buy it until he'd caved just three days earlier.

Now it was blood-colored war paint on his son's small body.

Kyle stopped in his tracks, his face turning hard. He jerked his hands down and crossed his arms over his chest. He eyed them suspiciously. "Me great fighter, Bambini. You bow and worship or I karate chop you!"

Riddick could feel Jack's body begin to shake with suppressed laughter.

Rachel's top blew. "You little brat! You are so dead!" she screamed, her eyes bugging.

Kyle's look turned to one of horror and he screamed for real, running as fast as he could to the closest sanctuary, which just happened to be behind his big brother. He collapsed to a sitting position, bear hugging Cameron's knees and looking out at the girl intent on murdering him.

"Move!" she shrieked at her older sibling, hands clenching into fists at her sides.

The oldest Riddick child only smiled at her, chewing on a piece of plain toast. "Oh, come on, Rach. He's only a baby. Besides, I'm sure he's sorry. Aren't you, Squirt?" he said, looking down at the boy peeking out from between his knees.

Kyle shook his head furiously.

Cam shrugged, still smiling. "Then again, maybe he's not sorry. I'm still not going to let you kill him. At least not with mom and dad watching," he said conspiratorially, using his head to motion in their direction.

Rachel growled, her eyes narrowing at both her brothers. "Oh, I know where you guys sleep! Don't you forget that when you go to bed tonight!" With that last jab she turned on her heel and marched stiffly out of the room.

Laughter attempted to burst from Jack's lungs, but she covered it with a well faked cough. She busied her hands with brushing the lint from Riddick's shirt, the smile returning to her face every time she glanced at their two sons.

Kyle still hadn't released his hold on Cam's shins.

"What's so funny?" Riddick finally asked. He could guess, but it was better to share the joke with her.

Jack shook her head. "I don't know if it's a good sign or not, but from the looks of things, Kyle's already got himself behind bars."

Riddick looked over himself. Sure enough, until Cam wrestled the kid off of him, Kyle looked like a prisoner gazing out at the rest of the world from between his brother's knees.

He snickered when Cam swooped the little monster up into his arms and started to fly him around like an airplane before letting his weight come to rest on one hip. Cam gave the boy his breakfast to gobble down.

"Who's a bad boy? Yes, you're a bad boy, Kyle. You're the best little brother in the world, you devious little fiend. Now go get dressed so I can drive you to daycare," Cam told him, putting the boy on his feet and giving him a swat on the backside for encouragement.

Kyle ran off, singing at the top of his lungs with a large chunk of bread stuck in his cheek. "Dun na na duh na! The day I was born! The nurse all gather round! They could tell right away! I was bad to the bone! I make old women lust! I make young girls squeal! I'm bad to the bone! Dun na na duh na!"

Jack and Riddick both stared at Cam, using their best guilt-assigning stares. Cam sighed mightily and shook his head, using one hand to brush back his unruly dark brown bangs from his eyes. "No matter how I try, he still never gets the words quite right to that particular classic. Well, better go get the car warmed up," he said, before making a quick exit.

Riddick looked at Jack and she at him. "What I can't figure out," she finally said, "is which one of our boys is acting as a bad influence on the other."

He winked, smiling. "At least they're getting along." A quick glance at his watch told him it was time to go.

"You'd better hit the road, or you'll miss your flight," Jack said, echoing his thoughts. She'd gotten way too good at reading his mind over the years. Sometimes it irked him when she picked thoughts out of his head. Riddick couldn't help wondering if someday she'd figure out that he still had some pretty fucked up stuff running around his brain.

He smiled, kissing her one last time. "Yeah, yeah, you just can't wait to get rid of me so you can run off to work. I hate how much you love your job, Jackie," he teased.

She grinned, letting her hand come to rest on his chest. "It's not like us criminal profilers get paid to visit lunar casinos."

She kissed him before he could retort, but that was probably for the best. He wasn't sure he could top her on that argument.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I apologize in advance for any deleted spaces between words. I keep expecting them to fix it that particular flaw in the system, but no luck yet.

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Gambling wasn't legal on New Mecca. However, it was perfectly legal anywhere off planet, including on the orbiting moons. The Bijou, located on moon Delta, had contracted out to Riddick's firm for an update of their security system. He and his supervisor, Ronnie, made the trip that day on the lunar shuttle to look over the casino's original blueprints and brainstorm suggestions. Mostly they went in person to get a feel for the place.

Ronnie liked the lunar races, so they stayed late that afternoon to watch one in the stadium seated viewing room. Outside, in the inhospitable environment, speed racers whipped around the huge track marked on the bare moon surface in tapered point tubes barely big enough for a man to sit down in. The engines on the racers developed so much thrust, the grandstand shook every time a wave of them passed by.

"Let me tell ya, Rick, there is nothing like this. Sitting back, not having to listen to your wife nag at ya for going to a casino... Hey, look, the guy I bet on just took the lead. He's looking pretty sharp for a semi-pro. Did you see those moves he put on? Slingshot himself right around that other guy."

Riddick nodded, the barest sparks of interest striking him. Ronnie was a decent guy, so the least he could do was feign interest for his sake. "Yeah, real sharp. What's the driver's name?"

His boss took out a mini-vid from the breast pocket inside his designer suit, and requested the roster from the casino's network. "Ah, here it is. Number 17, Dallas Conte."

The hair on the back of Riddick's neck stood on end. Conte. Now there was a name he hadn't heard in a long time.

"Ever heard of him before?" Riddick asked, making sure to sound nonchalant.

"Na, he must be a newbie. Probably just a kid. Some of these guys are hardly over the legal limit. He's got talent though. It must be my lucky day; I only picked him because I liked his number. Damn shame I didn't put more down on him."

Riddick watched the racers cross the finish line, reassuring himself that the name must be a coincidence. Dominic Conte, Jack's one time sweetheart and the man who used Riddick as bait during an assassination, died fifteen years ago in police custody. Besides, it was a big universe. Conte couldn't be that uncommon a name.

Ron got up. "Come on, Ricky. We've got an all-access pass for the day. Let's go meet those guys, see if we find any security problems, eh?"

Riddick slowly got to his feet, following with reluctance. On the one hand, he wanted to clear up the mystery of the racer's identity. On the other, a small part of him screamed that he should run the other way.

There wasn't much fanfare in the hanger dock. A few other drivers congratulated Conte, the winner, in passing and a few scowled at him. Riddick kept his face a mask of pure nothing. He didn't want to look out of sorts if this turned out to be what he feared.

"Hey, Conte," Ron called as they approached.

Conte wore a jumper in blue and white racing colors. The military grade boots he wore betrayed his amateur racing status--the pros all had entirely fireproof clothing, and a thinner sole in their boots for maximum control during shifting. When Ron called out to him, the young man didn't look up at first. He continued taking off his gloves and safety gear, stowing it in compartments on the racer he'd probably rented from the casino.

"Hey, Conte, nice driving out there," Ron congratulated, smacking the kid on the back.

Conte turned, pulling off his headgear and revealing short, thick blond hair that seemed to stand straight up on its own. He wore thin racing shades, but Riddick immediately recognized the features of Dominic Conte. Only—younger.

So many years had passed. Dom and Jack were the same age. By then Dominic should've look like a guy in his thirties, not a sixteen-year-old kid. Even if the man had done nothing but travel in cryo sleep, his age process couldn't reverse.

Then again, maybe Rick's memory made the guy out to be bigger and badder than the reality. He remembered Dom towering over him, but this kid stood at eye-level.

After another second of confusion the boy smiled at the compliment, appearing shy, modest. "Thanks. It's my first race here, so it's probably beginner's luck. None of these guys have seen my style before. I'm not exactly from around here."

"So, what's your real name?" Riddick asked, not surprised when the kid jumped at the question. The smile quickly returned, but not quick enough. The kid definitely didn't have the control of a professional--he wasn't used to hiding his identity. No matter how much Riddick hated the man, he recognized talent when he saw it. Dominic Conte was one smooth SOB. When he spoke lies, they rang true. This kid didn't have that going for him at all.

"I usually go by Dallas D, but they said I needed a last name to enter the races here. I wrote down Conte off the top of my head. I did a paper in high school on this guy once named Dominic Conte. He had a real badass reputation when he was my age. The name's bad luck though. Conte kicked it when he was only eighteen, and I'd like to live to race a little longer than that," Dallas said, his features easing into a comfort zone of truthfulness.

Ron chuckled. "Yeah, well it ain't bad luck for me. I won two hundred bucks off you today, kid. Why Dallas D? What's the 'D' stand for?"

Dallas chuckled. "My dog's name is D. I thought it sounded good. Pretty stupid, huh?"

"Excuse me, I need to speak with the winner."

Another body slipped past him, and Riddick moved aside for a short, well built guy in his twenties dressed in street clothes. "You Dallas?" the newcomer inquired.

"Yeah, that's me," the kid responded, no recognition apparent in his body language.

"Excellent. My name's Chris Lee, and I need you to come with me so we can get a sample from you. I apologize for any inconvenience, but you've been selected for random testing."

A laugh started then died in Dallas' throat. He briefly looked at both Riddick and Ron in disbelief. "Are you serious? I didn't think they tested for doping in racing. Definitely not in the amateurs," the kid said, reaching to push his shades higher on his nose--a subconscious and yet deliberate act. The back of Riddick's mind tugged at him, trying to force him to piece together an increasingly alarming puzzle. What did Dallas D have to hide?

_Maybe he's just on drugs..._ Riddick almost scoffed at the thought. Right, like life ever turned out so simple.

Chris shrugged. "Hey, I know, man. I couldn't believe it either. Usually I just do file work, but since they started this new program they just haven't had time to hire enough runners. We'll just get this done quick and then you can go celebrate. If you'll just step this way, a medical professional is waiting to administer the test..."

Before either of them knew it, the race winner had gotten whisked off at a clipped pace by the business-like young man.

Riddick glanced after them more than once, wondering what exactly had struck him oddest about Chris-the-paper-pusher. The guy dressed like Cam. Earth-tone cargos, a baggy, well-worn sweatshirt. His skin was paler than average for New Mecca. Still, Chris could've fit in on any college campus on the planet.

So why the fuck do I got such a bad feeling about him?

Maybe because Chris-the-paper-pusher didn't carry himself like a paper pusher. The guy wasn't real tall, yet he subtly projected himself like he had the biggest pair in the room. The average person might not even notice, but to a guy who spent a lot of time in slam, that sort of thing screamed for notice.

There were only two places Riddick knew of where a guy that young learned that sort of confidence.

The military, and prison.

"I'll be right back," he said to Ron, heading after the two boys once they'd gained a fair head start.


	3. Chapter 3

Riddick almost lost them, twice. 'Chris,' or whoever he was, had some serious skills when it came to losing a tail.

_Pretty sure he didn't learn that in the drug testing business. Maybe in the drug dealing business._

"I don't get it, where're we going?" Dallas asked after the pair had zigzagged through the complex for fifteen minutes, slowly working their way toward the docking stations. They'd taken every back route imaginable, and at the moment were traveling through a large, empty hallway beyond the backstage dressing rooms. With the evening shows still hours away, only the emergency lights illuminated the hallways.

Chris glanced back over his shoulder. "We're getting out of here. You're in trouble, Dallas. Serious trouble. Your mother sent me to find you. I can't say any more because we're being followed."

Rick just stopped himself from scoffing and giving away his position, just behind the last corner the boys had rounded--his back pressed against the wall so he could just peer around it. He'd stayed far enough back to always keep a corner between himself and the two boys he followed and he hadn't made a sound. Damn—this Chris kid wasn't just good, he was extraordinary.

"What's my mom's name?" Dallas asked, stopping and jerking his arm from the shorter man's grasp.

Chris turned sharp eyes on him, then jerked his head around, taking in their surroundings. "Run," he ordered, tone clipped.

"What?"

"Get the fuck out of here, now!"

From out of nowhere, Chris pulled a handgun. The sight of a weapon sent Dallas sprinting in the other direction. Riddick only just faded into the shadows as the kid came barreling around the corner. To his surprise, Dallas halted just feet from him and turned to look at him.

The two stared at each other for a drawn out second.

_There's no way he could've seen me. No fucking way._

After a second of hesitation, Dallas concluded Riddick didn't pose an immediate threat, and tore off again at a dead sprint.

Within seconds, a firefight muffled by silencers started just down the hall. One glance told Riddick Chris was outnumbered and outgunned. Not that it mattered. The kid ended a life with every shot he took.

Leaving Chris to fend for himself, Riddick trailed Dallas away from the flying bullets. It might've been some misplaced paternal instinct that drove him. Maybe the kid reminded him of Cam, or maybe he'd just gotten soft in his old age. Or more likely—maybe he felt he had a better chance of survival heading away from the guns.

_You just keep thinking that, Dick, and maybe it'll come true._

Jogging around another corner, Riddick found the boy getting the shit knocked out of him by three men who all wore the same clothes, yet no identifying badges or pins.

For a short moment, a burst of anger gave the boy an advantage in the scuffle, but a rifle butt to the temple put him down quick enough. Dallas laid still on the ground, completely separated from his wits.

_Let them take him. Don't you fucking step out there, Dick. Just think about who he looks like. Leave him. Leave him for dead._

"I guess it's true what they say about Casinos," he rumbled, materializing from out of the shadows in dramatic style. He cocked his head at the men who jerked around to look at him. "You fuck with the house, and they'll take everything you have."

They didn't intend to let him walk away alive, or to draw unnecessary attention to themselves with gunfire. The first one jumped forward, raising his gun to take Riddick down the same way they'd dealt with Dallas. It'd worked on a boy of good size and strength. Why not a man in his late forties?

The heel of Riddick's right hand smashed into the man's nose with a satisfying crunch, while his left instinctively reached for a shiv he hadn't carried in years. In the same motion, he dropped under an oncoming blow and pivoted, sweeping the man's left leg and dropping him onto his back.

Pulling a knife from the soldier's belt, he chucked it at an opponent ten feet away. The hilt hit him in the face, distracting him long enough for Riddick to surge to his feet and engage the man standing five feet away. Except, leaping to his feet was too fast a move for his cold muscles to endure. A twinge in his back nearly put him on his knees. He had to drop and roll away from a blow that glanced hard off his shoulder, numbing his right arm before sending it into a frenzy of pins and needles.

Stupid. Stupid and sloppy, expecting his body to respond like it used to—when he was in his teens and twenties. Riddick cursed himself for forgetting his limitations. He couldn't force himself to move so fast before his muscles were limber and ready.

Fortunately his mind required no such luxuries. Before he'd even finished his roll, he started loosening the knot of his tie, jerking it from around his neck once he'd regained a crouch, turning to meet the blow he knew strike at his head, a free end of the cloth held tight in each hand.

The fabric length wrapped like a snake around the man's forearm, and Rick tightened the cinch mercilessly. A slight shift of weight, a slight turn of momentum, and the man in black sailed by, crashing head-on into the wall with a loud crunch.

Riddick's coat came off in a flash, and he sent it flying at his final opponent, who'd just begun to recover his senses after the knife-hilt hit him in face and broke his nose. The jacket landed on his head, giving Riddick time to hook the tie around the back of the man's neck and plant a knee squarely in his diaphragm, doubling him over. Slipping behind the man, Riddick pulled the man off his feet with the tie, and once on the ground used the leverage generated by his own weight to strangle the man until he stopped struggling and grunting for breath.

Pushing the man off of him, Riddick rose to his feet and looked around for more, but his eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows like they once had. He had to listen, use his other senses to feel if danger lurked just beyond his line of sight.

There'd only been three of them. Nevertheless, he felt fatigued standing over them. Riddick hadn't aged badly, proof he might indeed be a subspecies human, benefiting from increased lifespan, but playing ball with his sons hadn't done much to keep him in tip-top condition. Breathing hard through his nose, he noted that point mentally, just as Dallas started to groan.

The boy slowly rolled over onto his stomach, the heel of his palm coming to rest against his forehead. With a great deal of effort, the kid levered himself to his feet. The broken shades on his nose fell away, revealing his true nature.

Rysen eyes. Black, bottomless, and dull.

Funny. Riddick didn't remember Dom's eyes looking like that. They'd held the spark of life—just no soul.

Dallas reached out in front of him, seeming to grab at the air while taking a step forward. It took Rick a minute to process the odd behavior, but soon it clicked. The kid couldn't see. He'd gone blind after getting hit in the head.

Curiosity almost got him in trouble. He let his mind wander, and almost too late he realized Dallas had stopped moving and held his breath to listen, see if he stood alone in the hallway.

The boy's fist almost took his head off.

"Nice moves," Rick admitted after a quick slip to the side of Dallas' punch, his fists up in case the kid took another swing. "Quick. Precise. I guess I should've expected that from a guy like you."

Dallas didn't even turn his head to look at him. His face had gone ashen in a hurry after his attempt to lash out. "You don't know me," he said shortly, before his knees buckled and he dropped to all fours, his back and shoulders heaving with each breath.

Riddick sighed, one hand going to the back of his neck to rub at a strained muscle. He'd have to contact Ron and make up an excuse for leaving while gathering Dallas up and getting the kid out of there without anyone seeing him. Good thing he knew exactly how to duck every security measure the Casino had.

He wished he'd never fucking left the house that morning—but at least he'd finally found a sane use for that goddamn tie.


	4. Chapter 4

Security teams consisting of six men each fanned through the back hallways of the casino, trying to find those responsible for the dead agents littering the floors.

Cody Vale walked easily past them, still wearing an official badge around his neck that stated his name as Christopher Valence, office assistant. He'd carefully constructed his disguise, obtaining a pair of dress-casual shoes, dark slacks, and a white collared shirt with sleeves that started out ironed before getting rolled up to his elbows for the sake of comfort. A pair of glasses and his short stature completed the picture. He looked like an office assistant. No one questioned his passage. If they'd frisked him, they would've found plenty of deadly goodies stashed on his person.

Cody searched the entire casino for his lost charge without meeting any more resistance, but he couldn't find Dallas anywhere. He found evidence of a struggle back the way he'd sent the kid packing, but no signs indicating if the enemy had taken Dallas, or if he'd gotten away—except for a broken pair of shades.

The mysterious tail had disappeared, and Cody could only wonder who that guy worked for. The newcomer was too old to be a regular military, or even Task Force. Yet the way he moved, stood, told Cody the guy could handle himself. If he had to guess, he'd say the old timer surprised Dallas' attackers, and grabbed the kid.

If they'd arrived at the casino just an hour earlier, they could've made a clean getaway with Dallas and collected a hefty paycheck for his safe return to his family. Instead Cody had gotten shot at, and lost the mark. He couldn't even find proof of life at this point.

After giving the pit crew Dallas had raced with a method for contacting him should they see the boy again, Cody decided to cut his losses and return to the Le Senata, the ship he shared with his boss and business partner, Dominic Kade.

Cody would be reporting his second mission failure ever.

Kade would understand—he hoped.

* * *

Riddick wasn't sure how to tell Jack he'd brought a Rysen male with a strong resemblance to the universe's most recent Con-X into their home. So when she returned from work, he didn't waste a moment in dragging her to the living room, and letting her see for herself.

In near shock, Jack sank down to sit on the edge of the couch, stroking the sleeping boy's cheek with her fingertips.

"Where did you find him?" she asked, turning her soft green eyes back to him.

Riddick shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest, standing over both of them. He'd resigned to stay close, in case the kid turned out to be dangerous.

"Same place I find all the weirdos I hang out with. Straight off a lunar casino's race pad. Kid took a nasty hit, so I brought him here. Figured you'd want me to. He's in trouble, Jack. Real trouble."

She only shook her head in awe. "My God, he looks just like Dom. He can't be, obviously, but he looks just like him, only—softer."

Riddick shrugged. "He's no professional killer for hire. He's wild in a fight, doesn't have the control Conte did. Kid's stubborn, but he's got no focus."

Biting her lower lip, Jack peered up at him. "What're we going to do with him, Rick? I mean, do you think he's Dominic's son?"

Riddick continued to study the boy's face. His memories of Conte had faded some, but with Jack recognizing the kid as well, he'd started to dread that it might be the only possible explanation. He may have brought the devil's own son into their lives. "The thought crossed my mind. How long ago did Conte die? Cam was only two or three, so it's been fifteen years, or more. That's cutting it close. Excluding the possibility that he's done extensive traveling in cryo, I'd say this kid's a little older than Rachel, and I'm not even sure you got pregnant until after Conte bit it. Besides, from what I know of Rysen biology, Dom would've had to find a female of his own species in order to have a child. I wouldn't give good odds he got out enough to find one. Not with the whole galaxy breathing down his neck."

"Mom?" the boy asked, startling them both.

They turned to look, finding Dallas blinking his eyes. He placed one hand over Jack's, where she'd let it come to rest on his neck, and followed her arm by touch to her face. His fingertips lightly brushed over her features, then dropped away.

"Who are you?" he asked, seeming to draw into himself, unsuccessful in masking the fear from his voice.

Riddick knew that 'lost little boy' act would go over well with his wife. She couldn't resist helping those in need. Then again, the more he saw of the kid, the more he thought it might not be an act.

"You were in a fight, Dallas. You remember that?" he asked.

The kid nodded, the heel of his palm coming to rest against his forehead. "Yeah, I remember. Just before the lights went out. They, uh, they must've damaged the implants in my eyes. I was born without functioning optic nerves. That's why it looks like I don't have irises. I had to get some parts of my eyes replaced," he explained, his lifeless gaze staring off into space. He turned his face in their general direction, but didn't seem to look at either of them. "Listen, do you think I could call my mom? Let her know I'm okay?"

Jack smoothed his hair, seeming to have taken a liking to the boy already. "Sure you can, honey. What's her name?"

"Pace Prize. That's my real name. Dallas Prize. I ran away because I got into some trouble after a car wreck. The authorities flipped out when they saw my eyes. They mistook me for something inhuman, and I was afraid they were going to kill me."

"Well, you're safe now, Dallas. Let's get you up so you can let your mother know where you are," Jack said, taking his arm and helping him to his feet. She led him to the comm unit in the kitchen.

Riddick shuffled after them. He'd have to speak with his wife about getting attached. The more he thought about it, the more his insides crawled at the possible error in judgment he'd made by saving Dallas, and bringing him home. Rick could blame habit all he wanted, but this one time it might've been better to go to New Mecca's authorities, make them keep the kid safe.

He just hoped he wouldn't live to regret it.

His mother never became hysterical. Not when she got mad, and not when she worried. Dallas was glad for that when he sent out a signal code into the wide world of the Network. He didn't think he could deal with an eccentric mother right then. Not after completely failing at life

It took a few minutes, but eventually she checked their drop point for attempts at contact, and sent an answering code, connecting them.

He couldn't see her face on the screen, but hearing her soothing voice was enough. "Dally? Are you okay, baby?" she asked, tone soft.

If he'd been a few years younger, he might've choked up and begged her to come get him.

He hated feeling alone in the dark...

"Yeah, Ma, I'm fine. I got into a fight, but I'm okay now. I miss you, a lot," he admitted, tilting his head toward the floor. His fingers had found a grove in the desk he sat at, and he traced over it repeatedly, toward and away from the source of his mother's voice.

He wanted to reach out, touch her, have her hug him. So much for going out and tackling the universe like a big boy...

"I miss you too. Are you in a safe place?" she asked, only a slight amount of worry reaching his sensitive ears.

"Yeah, I'm safe," he reassured her softly.

"Good. There are people after you who mean you harm, Dallas. Just stay where you are, and we'll come get you. When we're all together again, we can find a new place to live where they won't find us."

"Okay," he said.

The woman who'd been so nice to him stepped in then, giving a location where they could meet in the city, once his mother came for him.

Jack, the woman told his mom her name was Jack.

Strange name for a woman.

He got to speak briefly with his sister, Ticey. Then with Aunt Lasia, and Uncle Rhys. He almost choked up talking to his sister, feeling guilty for having left her alone without anyone to protect her. Fortunately, he spoke with his Aunt Lasia after that, and she tough-loved him back into feeling strong, like he was big enough to survive both living with strangers, and having lost his vision.

Finally, he said good-bye to his mother, and then the link was broken. Ten days, they were a whole ten days away from his location under optimal travel conditions. It was a long time to wait in the company of strangers—especially while blind.

* * *

"He's lost his vision again," Pace admitted once the link was broken. Her nose began to sting, and the room swam in the tears collecting in her eyes. "He must be so scared..."

Lasia's husband, Rhys, had taken Ticey to tuck her back into bed. Pace thanked God for that. At least her daughter wouldn't have to witness her mother breaking down.

In private, she'd cried so often lately. At least this time the tears partially came from relief.

"He'll be fine," Lasia reassured her, wrapping her arms around Pace's shoulders, hugging her from behind. "He came from a strong family, and if I do say so myself, I think we did a damn good job raising him. It took all three of us—Rhys, you, and I—but he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. Hmm?"

Pace let a hand come to rest on the other woman's arm to thank her for the kind words, and she nodded an affirmative.

They were a strong family, a strong pack. She and Lasia had grown up together, meeting in the thieves' guild, and then moving on to work with the Resistance in their early and mid-teens. When Dallas came along, Pace feared raising him alone; but Lasia and Rhys never abandoned her. All of them started out war orphans, but they vowed never to allow Dallas to experience the same fate.

"We'll need help getting to New Mecca. There're military checkpoints on the lanes between here and there. None of us can pass the screenings," Pace said after clearing her throat. She had to keep her mind on business or they'd never get there.

Las straightened up, squeezing Pace's shoulder with one hand. "Call that guy you met in your classes. Brodell. He likes you. If he thinks you might let him close to you, he'll come along. We'll cut him loose wherever he wants to go when we've got Dallas back."

Pace smiled a little. There was no denying it—in spite of Rhys' calm, unwavering male presence, Lasia remained their leader. In the Resistance, Lasia learned to lead others, and could do so with graceful, but brutal force.

"I shouldn't use Robert like that. He's been nothing but a friend to me."

"Dallas is more important than betraying his trust," Las reminded her.

Pace nodded, her qualms instantly vanishing. "I know."

"Call him," Lasia said, walking toward the door, back to the bedroom she shared with her husband.

"You know I will. Good-night, hemosa," Pace called softly after her, using the Rysen word for 'sister.'

"Good-night, hemosa pecena," Lasia replied.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Sorry about taking so long to update. I've really struggled with this story. I have a good portion of it written, I'm just not sure what all I want to include because there's a lot of development I want to do, but at the same time I don't want to spend too much time on chapters without much action. Anyway, I finally figured I should just start posting what I've got, consequences be damned.

Let me know if it's at all likable. I'd really appreciate it!

* * *

Cam arrived home in the early evening with Kyle in tow. The two boy participated in mixed martial arts classes at the local gym every other night after school--Cam in the advanced sparring class for adults, and Kyle in the Little Dragons class with other children his age.

Rachel returned around the same time from an afternoon of 'studying' with her girl friends.

Jack took the lead on explaining away Dallas' presence to their children. She told them Dallas was coworker's nephew, and when one of the coworker's relative fell ill, Dallas needed a place to stay until his mother arrived to claim him in ten days.

The kids seemed to accept the story easily enough. Cam ignored Dallas so completely, Riddick wondered if he saw a rival male in Dallas, especially when Kyle so easily attached himself to the newcomer. That must've seemed like a pretty harsh betrayal. Cam had always been Kyle's one and only adored favorite--sometimes choosing his big brother even over their father.

While Cameron showered and prepared for a night out with friends, Kyle dragged his chair over to where Dallas sat at the kitchen table and climbed onto it.

"I'm Kyle," Kyle said.

Dallas stared off at nothing, but he smiled. "Nice to meet you, Kyle," he said, holding out a hand in Kyle's direction for the boy to shake. The little boy took the offered hand, shaking it gravely.

Sitting across the table from the boys, Riddick didn't even try to hide his smile at Kyle's respectful demeanor. He knew his son--the calm and serious couldn't last.

Rachel placed plates in front of all of them along with silverware. Jack brought the steaming roast chicken in from the kitchen on a large serving platter and placed it at the center of the table.

"Dallas, why are you blind?" Kyle asked.

Jack sat on the other side of Kyle, serving food onto his plate--including vegetables. Rachel had grabbed the chair on the other side of Dallas, where Cameron usually sat.

"That's not a polite question, Kyle," Jack admonished, heaping another spoonful of green beans onto her son's plate.

"It's okay," Dallas said, his hands safely folded in his lap so he wouldn't knock anything over. "I'm not actually blind most of the time. Have you ever won in a sport, Kyle?" he asked.

Kyle nodded. "Yeah. I win in sparring all the time at karate."

"Have you ever had someone you beat in sparring get mad?"

"Mmhm," Kyle affirmed with a nod of his head, a fork grasped in one fist so he could stab a piece of chicken on his plate and pop it into his mouth. Kyle, like the rest of his family, was a carnivore.

"Well I do racing sometimes, and after I won, some of the other racers thought I'd raced dirty. One of them got so mad he punched me. He didn't hurt me, but I have implants in my eyes that help me see. When he punched me, the implants were damaged."

"What's it like?" Rachel asked, leaning toward Dallas on both elbows. "Can you see any light at all?"

The corner of Dallas' mouth quirked up and he turned toward Rachel's voice. "Nope. It's completely dark. I have to do my seeing with my fingertips."

"Is that how you recognize people?" she pressed.

Dallas shrugged, his seat creaking when he shifted his weight. "Yeah, when I was a kid I'd read faces. Especially with my mom and..." he trailed off. "With my aunt and uncle," he finished, his jaw tightening for a fraction of a second.

Riddick noted the microexpression, and identified it immediately as pain. Deep, ugly psychological pain.

Rachel reached out and took Dallas' hand from his lap, tugging against his initial resistance and bringing his fingertips to her face. She closed her eyes as his touch ghosted over her features, learning what they looked like. Riddick's upper lip twitched when he heard the tiniest of sighs escape his daughter and noted the guarded expression of Dallas' face relax for just a moment.

_That sure can't be good,_ he noted, checking to see if Jack noticed the exchange between the two teenagers and finding her preoccupied with getting Kyle to eat his dinner instead of build castles out of it.

"No, mama, the beans are the alligators in the moat!" Kyle protested. "Tell her Dallas. They're alligators!"

Dallas' hand left Rachel's face, and both boy and girl smiled nervously. In that second Dallas looked so much like Conte.

_Get him out of your house. He looks just like Conte, what the hell are you doing, letting him near your daughter?_

The desire to oust the boy warred with Riddick's inability to detect any malice in him. Even under the influence of drugs, Riddick had known Conte didn't mean well. The way Dallas had nearly broken down when speaking to his mother--that didn't exactly become a hardened criminal.

He'd brought the kid into their home and he'd need to keep an eye out, but Riddick couldn't convince himself that Dallas was the enemy here.

"My last name is Riddick," Kyle told Dallas, a large mouthful of potatoes stuffed in his cheek. "Sometimes at night, I hear my mom calling daddy Riddick like it's his first name, but it's not. What's your last name?"

Jack noticeably blushed, pinching the bridge of her nose and turning a deep crimson in her cheeks and neck. Riddick couldn't help smiling at her reaction, in spite of his inner turmoil.

Dallas finally let his attention fall away from Rachel, who shot a death glare at her younger brother for becoming a distraction.

"My last name is Prize," Dallas said.

Kyle's face screwed up like it did when he ate vegetables. "What the hell kind of name is that?" he burst out.

"Language," Jack and Riddick both scolded at the same time, glaring at their youngest.

Kyle threw up his hands, food flying off the fork he held. "What!" he said in protest to their scolding.

Yes, it would definitely be an interesting ten days.

* * *

Jack took it upon herself to tuck in their blind guest that night, making a protesting Rachel read Kyle his bedtime story while Jack readied the guest room, and watched with interest while Dallas mapped out the entire second floor of her house. He counted the steps between his room and the bathroom, the master bedroom, the stairwell, and then double checked all the numbers. He smiled when she took his hand to guide him to his bed.

"I'll bet I look really funny doing this. I've been able to see since I was about six, so I'm out of practice. I only went blind one other time—after the accident I was in back home, the one that got me in so much trouble. I think that's when the implants were damaged. A quick fix got me by until today, but I think this set is done for. They'll probably have to completely replace them when I get around to seeing a specialist."

"Well, you still seem to have a knack for finding your way around. It must be scary for you, blind in a house you don't know, with a bunch of people you don't know. Just having Kyle grabbing at your knees must be terrifying," Jack said, her mind still scrambling to find a way to dissuade Kyle from hanging on Dallas. Scolding her youngest had worked about as well as it usually did.

Dallas shrugged, feeling with one hand for the bed his shin bumped into. He sat down, his eyes drifting absently toward the ceiling. "That part I don't mind. I've got a little sister back home. I've lost track of how long I've been gone, but she's only eight or nine. She never knew our dad, so I had to step in to replace him. I really miss her and my mom, a lot more than I thought I would."

Jack smiled at him comfortingly, remembering too late he couldn't see the gesture. She had to let him hear it in her voice.

"You know, Dallas, you remind me of a man I knew in my teenage years. Do you know much about your father, what he looked like?" Jack asked, trying to sound like she wasn't pumping him for information, and probably failing.

Dally only shrugged, no emotion present on his smooth features. "I don't know, Mrs. Riddick. I never saw my dad. He left when I was five or so, and I hadn't gotten my eyes fixed then. He never came back, which is probably for the best. He's a coward, and I'll beat the crap out of him if he ever hurts my mom again. I don't think he ever hit her; it just took the life out of her when he left us. Before I had to run away, mom was just starting to get the divorce papers together and finally moving on with her life. It took her ten years to finally give up on him."

Jack smiled grimly, patting the boy reassuringly on the shoulder. Something about the way he talked so freely made her want to protect him from all the hurts the universe had to offer. She knew all about having a father that didn't care.

_I can't ever let myself forget how lucky I am to have Rick..._

* * *

"I don't think he's Dom's son," she said, crawling under the covers next to her husband. Rick was already sprawled out on his back, apparently thinking hard on the situation. "He said his dad's not dead, just MIA. Left when he was five."

Riddick let the back of his hand come to rest against his forehead. "So much for that theory. Conte's definitely dead. Hasn't had a price on his head in over fifteen years. Any possibility the kid's mother remarried? Or, more likely, married for the first time after Dom died?" he asked, the implication heavy in his words. The two of them knew from experience Dominic Conte's preference to bed women and leave them.

Jack shrugged, apparently choosing not to take offense at the remark. "Who knows? It's probably better not to pry. We might end up opening a can of worms we don't want any part of."

"Yeah, you ain't kidding. That kid looks enough like Conte to pass for him. One thing I know for sure: I'd never want Cam in his place," he admitted, reaching over to turn off the light next to their bed.

* * *

The dream started out familiar. Cruising down the highway, the breeze brushing his face. Sirens and lights flashed everywhere, but it didn't matter. They'd never catch him.

They never did.

He didn't know Tonya very well, but he raced with her brother all the time. She was two years older than him, and incredibly beautiful. She whooped and yelled in the passenger seat, positively bouncing next to him.

Dallas smiled at her enthusiasm, glad he'd brought her along. The experience was always ten times better with someone cheering him on. He was used to driving alone, but it didn't matter. What was a hundred-pound counterbalance to a powerful machine?

Tonya snapped a couple pictures of the cops chasing them, then a picture of him. They had the radio cranked while rolling down the highway, flowing through traffic like liquid through sand. He smiled, feeling like a real stud.

A real man.

_Can't ever top this, Pops. I don't care who you were. I bet you'd piss your pants in a ride this hot, you fucking coward._

The cops gave chase, but they couldn't keep up. Not when the ride became part of him, and he could feel each turn before he made it. He started thinking five, then ten moves ahead.

They put disruptors out ahead of him. They'd done it before, but he'd always been alone then. When his accelerator and steering wheel locked up, he went for the brakes, fighting for control of the vehicle. If he'd been a little stronger, maybe hadn't misjudged the weight change, they would've been fine. Maybe they would've skidded a couple hundred feet before the lock-up would've ceased. Instead, they shot off the side of the freeway into a culvert bringing water down from the high planes into the city.

His seatbelt didn't hold his weight against the impact. Must've been a faulty part, or maybe the owner bought the car from a chop-shop that cut a few corners to save some cash. Not that it mattered—at the speed they hit the water, a full stop from the belt would've killed him. It slowed his momentum before breaking, and he got his arms up just in time before he crashed headfirst through the windshield, slamming into the water.

The liquid fuel cell blew just a second later. Definitely a chop-shop item. Standard tanks rarely caught on fire, and never exploded.

The impact to his head sucked him into darkness, but for just a second he opened his eyes, and even underwater he could feel the heat, see the color of the flames against the clear sky, before the swift current washed him away from the danger.

It was so strange. He'd never seen color before in his life.


	6. Chapter 6

Cody sat on an old thread-bare red and yellow couch in the living space of _Le Senata_, listening for any sign of life from his partner's quarters. He'd gotten back hours ago, making the decision to wait for Kade to get off his ass and come out of his fortress of solitude. His business partner had a couple screws loose, and bothering him while impaired could turn deadly. Since the two of them reunited to go into business together, hardly anything had changed—except for Kade regaining his ability to speak. Back in the day he couldn't say a word; it still struck Cody as odd to have normal conversations with the guy.

But Kade hadn't lost any of the crazy.

Cody tapped an impatient rhythm on the couch arm, trying to watch some of the local entertainment on TV. A lot of it was in some mix of Common and old Arabic. The translator on the television was busted, and most of the Common replacement words came out of the speakers sounding like static.

Had Kade seriously been out all day? They were supposed to do this job together, and so far Cody had done all the leg work. He'd tracked Dallas Prize to the Casino, knowing his propensity for fast vehicles and that New Mecca, being independent from the Empire, didn't require classic human status from their racers. They also had a lower age limit for driving.

Easy enough to find the kid, harder to extract him. Why did so many people want him? So Dallas crashed a stolen car and a girl died. Grand theft auto and a manslaughter charge on a minor, big whup. No one wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit outside of the planet where it occurred.

Something else was going on here, and if Kade knew anything about it, he stayed too wasted to mention it. The guy never was a conventional professional, but this job had really thrown him. Before leaving to get Dallas, Cody made a decision to cut the kid loose if conflicts arose. Too many things felt off about this whole job.

Then he saw the kid in person and a lot of things clicked into place.

A hiss of air signaled Kade's door opening. Cody didn't bother getting up, hearing the large man trudge into the bathroom. After a minute he heard the shower running.

When Kade came out he wore nothing but a towel around his waist. The two of them didn't put much stock in modesty on a ship so small. Besides, better to see another guy in a towel than to smell him after stomping through the jungle for two weeks.

Kade stood far taller than Cody at a few inches over six feet. He had black hair he still kept in a military cut shaved close to his skull, and his muscles looked like they belonged on a carved statue of a perfect male specimen. Neither of them saw much time planet-side and remained appropriately pale. When they did take shore leave, girls flocked to the former sergeant before settling for his younger, shorter, less impressive sidekick. Cody shuddered to think what his options would look like if Kade didn't have the whole 'suffer alone' gig going on.

Holding onto the tuck in the towel at his hip, Kade took a seat in the gray easy chair at ninety degrees to the couch Cody sat on, careful to not give any unwanted peep shows.

"I guess recovering the kid didn't take," Kade said, rubbing at his still-wet head. Drops of water clung to him everywhere and his skin had turned to goose flesh in the cold ship air.

Cody shrugged, his jaw tightening in irritation. "What can I say? These two man jobs, they're a killer to pull off solo."

Heavy silence hung between them. Kade's shoulders didn't slump in shame, nor did his black eyes flash with anger. "I may have fallen off the wagon, Vale," he said.

"Yeah," Cody said. "For a while now."

"So the Task Force or whoever got him?"

Cody shook his head. "Na, man. A third party. Put in a query, popped back with one Richard Riddick."

Kade blinked, rubbing at one temple. "Say that name again?" The look on his face had turned to consternation--a tightening between his brows. The same look he always got when trying to pull a memory out of a dark place.

"Riddick," Cody began again. "Six-foot one. Bald. Born in--"

"Detroit. Holy fuck," Kade mumbled. "I ran into this guy once--before they modded my memory for the Sharks. Way before, I think."

Cody Vale got recruited nice and easy to join the Tiger Sharks. Captain "Mako' Scott, the platoon leader, personally visited him in prison and extended an invitation. Kade was Shanghaied. Task Force agents beat him nearly to death, he nearly lost his right arm, and they wiped his memory almost completely clean with some brain washing on the side.

Welcome to the Army, son. Hold still while we drill a few holes in your head and remove the portion of your brain that allows you to think for yourself. Classic humans didn't get treated that way. Just the subspecies scum the Army brought in the back door to do the high casualty assignments.

"So how're we classifying him, Kade? Friend? Agent? Merc? Competition?"

Silence from the half-naked sergeant.

Cody raised an eyebrow. "Guy who wants to rip off your balls for banging his wife? He is married to one Jaqueline Riddick."

Kade grunted absently at that last one. "Ya know, I can't remember what happened. I know this guy won't be happy to see me, but the specifics..." Kade motioned to the invisible memory suckers in the space around his head as an explanation. "But fuck me, I think there was a girl."

"Always is," Cody chimed in. "You know, man, I'm starting to think your track record with women is even worse than mine."

That one got him a cold glare from Kade's demon-eyes.

"Just saying. So, assuming we find this guy, and after your balls are still intact--"

The sergeant shook his head. "We'll scope it out, but we'll keep our distance. Riddick's been a civilian for a long time. Odds are good he'll hand the boy over to his mother."

"If Riddick hands the kid over, we don't get paid."

Pressing down on the arms of the chair with both palms, Kade levered himself to his feet. The towel attempted to drop, but he caught it before it slipped too low and started to shuffle back to his room.

"Kade, I'm serious about the money thing. I'm a growing boy. I have needs. I'm so starved for cash, I'd probably take Riddick in myself if he was worth anything."

Sarge laughed out loud at that, turning the corner. "Yeah, you could—if the Empire didn't want you more than most criminals out there. The Army still owes you a court martial and execution, remember?"

"Blow me, Kade."

Kade's head briefly reappeared from around the corner. He'd taken the towel off his waist and wiped at the water on his chest and under his arms. "I outrank you, Vale. I realize we've been AWOL for something like thirteen years, real time, but still..."

"Pfft, fine. Request to be blown, Sergeant!" Cody amended sharply, picking up the remote off the floor and using it to flip channels on the vid screen.

Still laughing, Kade disappeared to his quarters.

* * *

Riddick couldn't remember his knuckles ever getting so sore after a round with the bag. Over the past few days, he'd pushed himself far harder than usual in his morning workouts, but in the back of his mind he knew his efforts didn't hold a candle to the regiments he used to force himself through. He knew that, even as he dragged his tired body out of the basement and upstairs for a shower. He had no idea what to do about it, other than keep working.

Early on in life, he'd accepted that some degree of self-loathing came with being Richard B. Riddick; but ever since Dallas Prize had fallen into his lap, those old feelings had started nagging at him with a vengeance. When had he gotten so soft? When had he become so...civilized?

The Riddick who'd died on T2 would've hated the current Richard Riddick with a passion. Hated enough to kill, maybe. Rick hardly knew what that meant anymore—to become angry enough to murder another human. The years in which he'd endured a Seka haze put that part of his life nearly beyond the scope of his memories. When he thought back on it, he felt like he watched someone else doing those things.

He wondered sometimes what would happen if his kids knew. If he and Jack told them about the man he'd once been. Would they believe it?

Rick glanced into Cam's bedroom, finding the dark-haired boy still asleep. He watched his oldest child for a few minutes through the crack in his door—watched the slow rise and fall of Cam's chest. Riddick had watched his son often when Cameron was a baby, and a toddler. Sometimes as a father gazing with wonder at his son. Sometimes as a predator considering potential prey.

More than once, he'd tried to put his mind into the perspective of Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer. If he'd fathered a child then, before everything that happened, would he have smothered Jack and the baby while they slept? Would he have allowed such a gigantic liability to live?

Johns had made him out to be a monster. He had been. But in spite of the tough talk and posturing, killing never struck him as amusing—unless it was for revenge, like with Johns.

If he'd ever been capable of killing Jack, or Cameron, it probably would've been because, somewhere in his twisted mind, he would've seen it as putting them out of their misery. The last thing Rick ever wanted was someone he gave a damn about to suffer just so some sick fuck could get at him.

Cam and Rachel would never believe it of their father. They wouldn't think him capable of such thoughts. Riddick took a few steps down the hall and stood outside of Dallas' room, knowing without checking that the tightly shut door was locked.

He had a feeling Dallas would believe it. The boy had better survival instincts than his kids. Cam and Rach took after their mother.

Riddick hoped Dallas took after his mother too. He had a bad feeling about what might happen if the kid took after his father, whoever he might've been.

* * *

"That's it, right there. That's the star system where my mom met my dad," Rachel said, pointing upward as she and Dallas lay out under the mild New Mecca sky.

He smiled, his teeth almost glowing in the half-moonlight. "You know, I can't actually see it. You've got to tell me about it, not try to show me. My aunt used to do that. She'd try to show me things when I was a kid, and I'd always have to remind her that she had to describe them so I'd know if they were smooth or rough, big or small. When I finally could see, it turned out she'd led me astray on more than one occasion."

She laughed with him, scooting a little closer to his side and shivering. "Weren't you scared, running around the universe on your own?" she asked, finding his body warm and comforting as she slowly slipped one arm across his chest, hugging him tight, her head resting on his shoulder. She studied his face, enamored by his perfectly symmetrical features. For about the millionth time she thanked Allah this handsome boy was blind, so she could stare at him all she wanted.

Dallas half shrugged. "Yeah, it scared me a little. But on the other hand, I finally got to race legally. I know you think I sound crazy, but nothing compares to fast driving. It's just you and the machine on the edge of a blade. Nothing else matters."

Rachel smiled sadly. "That sounds really cool," she said, propping her head up on her fist. "I wish I could get out of this place. I swear I must've been adopted. I love my mom and dad and all, but I'm sick of my brothers and school..."

Dallas' eyebrows knit together. "You don't like school? Why not?" he asked.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Because it's boring! I hate the girls in my class; and the guys too. They're nothing like me. They pretend to be all righteous and religious, but then they treat kids who are different from them like shit. Then there's Cam. Cam Riddick, the most wonderful boy ever born. Even my teachers love him. He's smart, and handsome, and people fall all over themselves to like him. Even my parents wonder why I don't do as well as him in school. I've always struggled. It's just so stupid!"

Dallas blinked a couple times, his blank eyes staring off at nothing. "You know, Rachel, you shouldn't be afraid of things that are hard for you. The more you struggle, the sweeter it is when you finally get a taste of winning. If you couldn't go to school, I think you'd appreciate it more."

She sighed heavily. "I doubt it. I really do. How would you know anyway? You ran away from it all. You escaped."

Dallas remained silent, turning his head away from her. She immediately regretted her words, seeing how they seemed to repel him. " Dallas? You did run away, right?"

"Yeah, I ran," he said softly. "But I had to quit school a long time ago. Before junior high. They started screening male students in my sector for genetic impurities."

The strength of her reaction to his words startled her. Rachel's heart suddenly jumped up into her throat, and she struggled to breathe around it. "Why?" she asked, in the back of her mind dreading whatever he was trying to tell her. Knowing she probably wouldn't like it.

Dallas shrugged. He couldn't see, but he seemed to sense her change of mood anyway. "You know. For diseases, and for other things," he said, just above a whisper.

The air around them suddenly seemed so still and heavy. Rachel began to pull away from him, needing space, a breeze, anything. "What other things, Dallas? What're you talking about?" she asked, warning in her tone.

"Please don't freak out," he whispered, letting his unnatural black eyes fall shut. His fingers twisted blades of grass, nervously pulling them out of the ground. "Please don't tell your family I'm—not like you." He opened his eyes again, baring their black depths. "I'm not human, Rachel."

Icy fear crawled up her spine and set her hair on end. She couldn't believe it. She'd lived in the same house as this boy for days, and she'd had no idea he was one of them. A non-human. Probably of some species bent on wiping hers from the galaxy. If not, then he still might carry a disease that would kill her family and everyone she knew. Entire colonies had been wiped out by subspecies-born diseases that jumped the gap to infect classic humans.

"I've never hurt anybody," he added quickly. "You've got to believe me, Rach. My family and I are far more scared of humans than you should be of us. We aren't bloodthirsty or insane, like they make us out to be. We've lived among classic humans for years, and they never knew. We try not to bother anyone. We try so hard. But there are things we can't ever overcome."

"Like what?" she asked, trying to soften her tone. She didn't know what to make of this, but the way he pleaded with her sounded so much like a scared little boy. She couldn't hate him. She almost felt the need to protect him.

"Like where we came from. The people who came before us. You've heard of Dominic Conte, haven't you?"

She nodded, thinking she knew where he was going with this. Conte was one of the worst. A beast with no brain, no morals, no humanity. Hearing Dallas' words made her realize that man's legacy would cause non-humans to suffer for generations, because many humans assumed they were all like him.

Dallas bit his lip, brushing his bangs back from his face. She could see him struggling with something internally.

"What is it, Dally?" she prompted softly.

The large youth merely shook his head. "Nothing. He's just a plague to my race—that's all. It doesn't matter."

A male voice interrupted their reverie. "Let me tell you what does matter, dipshit. You, getting your hands the fuck off my sister."

Rachel sat up immediately, turning her head to look at a pissed off Cameron looming over them in the dark. His hands were tight fists at his sides and he looked every inch as imposing as their father. She scowled at him. "Mind your own business, Cam. He wasn't touching me. I just got cold."

"Yeah, well, it seems like you've been getting cold a lot lately, Rach, at awfully convenient times."

Dallas slowly hefted himself from the ground to his feet, walking in the general direction of the Riddicks' back door.

Cam stopped him by placing a hand firmly on his chest, and shoving him back. "Where the hell do you think you're going, half-breed? I'm not done talking to you."

"You don't want to talk to me," Dallas informed him blandly, attempting to walk around him. The older boy shoved him again, this time to the ground.

"I'll talk to whoever I want," Camron growled, angrily eyeing the two of them.

Rachel's hands balled into fists and the steam started to roll off of her. "Quit being such a jerk, Cam! I'm going to tell mom you pushed Dallas down. He's blind, you idiot!"

Dallas quietly regained his footing, going through the motions of dusting himself off and then stood still, like a statue, apparently staring off at nothing. Cam took a step closer to his sister; apparently about to make her eat her words with a sharp retort, but found himself on his ass less than a second later. Rachel couldn't follow the movement, but Dallas popped her brother in the jaw so hard it nearly put him out for the count.

"Found you," Dallas said coldly, before heading up to the house.


	7. Chapter 7

"I swear to God, Dad, it was like he could see me. I think he's lying. I think he can see just fine!" Cam groaned, poking the darkening bruise on the right side of his jaw. His face hurt on both sides. Surprisingly, the worst of the injury was opposite the impact point, where the padding behind his mouth's left hinge got compounded by the blow.

His father only chuckled, morbidly amused by his son's misfortune. He took a seat next to Cam at the kitchen table and placed an icepack unit on each side of his son's swollen face. "You underestimated him. You pushed him down, let him get up, walked close enough for him to hit you, and didn't bother to shut up. You handed this to him. All he had to do was listen. He walked right into the living room and told us he'd punched you. It could've been worse."

"How?" the boy complained. "I heard him tell Rachel he's a sub-species. How could it be worse?"

His dad shrugged his broad shoulders. "Could've used a hook instead of a jab. Kid's no southpaw. He took it easy on you."

"Funny, I didn't notice. Besides, I had a right to push him down. I don't like how close he's getting to Rachel. I think he's playing her. Damn half-breed."

His father made a noise that sounded neither like an agreement, or a negation. "Yeah, maybe he is playing her. Hard to say. I've never been a blind kid with a girl my age throwing herself at me. For all I know, she's taking advantage of him. Whatever the case, he's leaving tomorrow night, and I doubt we'll ever see him again."

Cam nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I guess. Rachel's the one I really have a problem with, though. It's like, I try to watch out for her, and she doesn't appreciate it at all. She's an ungrateful brat. You've seen how she is to Kyle. Half the time she's trying to kill him."

"She hasn't adjusted to him yet," his dad said, and then paused for a moment to think. "Then again—I'm not entirely sure I've adapted to Kyle yet, and he didn't even usurp my throne as baby of the family like he did with Rachel. Keep in mind you enjoyed that. All of a sudden she got treated to the same brand of parenting you'd experienced since she was born."

Cam attempted to grin, but it quickly faded with the flare of pain it caused him. "That was pretty good. You guys spoiled her, ya know, before Kyle came along."

Riddick grinned, letting some of his weight lean against the table on an elbow. "Yeah. We spoiled you too. Just not for so long. If you want a shower, you'd better take one tonight before everyone goes to bed."

"Yeah, okay. Just keep that freak away from me. I think if I see him again tonight I'll knock him on his ass."

Riddick slowly got to his feet, patting Cam hard on the shoulder. "If you had any idea who Dallas resembles, you'd think twice about that statement. He reminds me a lot of a guy I knew when I wasn't so respectable," he said, on his way out of the kitchen.

Cam snorted. "Ha! You, not respectable? That'll be the day, Pops."

* * *

Riddick jerked his head to one side, cracking his neck once, and then again to the other side before mounting the stairs.

_Just goes to show how well Cam really knows his parents. He thinks we were always like this. He really doesn't have a clue about the people we used to be. Starting to wonder if I have a clue about who we used to be._

He looked in on Jack reading Kyle a bedtime story, and stopped to watch from the doorway. She sat in bed with the boy, stroking his soft hair as he slowly faded into dreamland. The grip he had on his stuffed monster slowly relaxed, and soon his breathing became deep and regular.

What if he'd had a mother like that? Would he have turned out like Cam? A smart, well-adjusted athlete with an unbelievable social schedule?

_If you hadn't spent so much time in slam, hadn't gotten on the HG in all your mean, nasty convict glory, Jack would've died on that planet._

_Worth the trade?_

All he had to do was think about Jack's body beneath his--clothed or not, didn't matter. Her beautiful eyes, her fingers stroking the stubble at the base of his skull, her scent.

Definitely worth it. The rug rats weren't half bad either.

She put the book down and kissed their son, spending an extra moment straightening out his dark-blond hair. Riddick could only imagine what she thought about in that moment, but he had a pretty good idea. With their newly acquired foster son leaving the next day, and Cam soon moving out of the house, Jack was becoming nostalgic in advance.

Silently, he approached where she sat, letting his weight settle next to hers on the edge of their son's bed.

"Do you think he looks like an angel when he sleeps?" Jack whispered.

Riddick grinned maliciously. "No. He's a demon—never fooled me for a second."

His wife only rolled her eyes, playfully smacking him on the arm. "Well it's not like there's any question who fathered him. Any day now I expect he'll get sent home for threatening to get 'shiv happy' on another kid's ass," she snickered, leaning over to muffle the sound against his broad shoulder.

Riddick half shrugged. "I'm more concerned he'll take a butter knife and get shiv happy on an electrical socket. Kid's got plenty of guts, but no common sense. The other day he stood on a chair and tried to pin himself to the wall with a nail gun. Still can't figure out how he got the tool chest to open up for him. I've changed the password twice. Whenever I conclude he must be brain damaged, he does something ingenious just to prove me wrong."

Jack smiled blithely at that comment. "Maybe it's just a phase he's going through, like the terrible twos."

He nodded gravely. "Yeah, you're probably right. I mean, for the first six hours or so, things were great. Ever since then, he's just been going through a phase."

Jack let her shoulders slump in mock defeat. "Well, I guess there's nothing more we can do besides throw him to the wolves. Do you want to do it, or should I?"

Riddick leaned over to kiss her neck. "Let's wait 'til morning. He's sleeping now. Besides, we should probably spend the night thinking about it before we do anything—rash," he whispered, his arm slipping around her waist, pulling her closer.

After a long moment, Jack drew away from him, reluctantly getting to her feet. Riddick leaned over to briefly kiss their youngest good-night, pulling up the covers around him—knowing such signs of affection would earn him bonus points with Jack that night. He got up, following his wife out into the hallway. He left the door open a crack, just in case Kyle had a nightmare and needed to find them in the dark.

* * *

Riddick rose early to leave for work. Even Jack slept on—her alarm not set to go off for another hour.

He expected a quiet house, with no one else up. It surprised him to find Rachel sitting at the kitchen table, looking forlorn.

"Hey, dad," she said, glancing up briefly. She had something in a bowl before her, but she only picked at it.

"Hey," he said, studying her out of the corner of one eye. "You're up early."

She shrugged, staring blankly at the tabletop. So maudlin.

He sighed, slowly closing the distance between them.

Richard B. Riddick wasn't meant to have a daughter. He was too tough, too harsh. Girls needed constant encouragement, and sometimes he could find nothing to praise, especially when Rachel acted like a spoiled brat, unaware of the high quality of life she led.

It took him a long time to figure out adolescent girls were purposely self-destructive when they experienced failure. Rachel wasn't unaware of how good she had it. She became critical of everything around her because she felt guilty for performing poorly in spite of all she had going for her.

His hands weren't as callused as they'd once been, but when he ran his fingers through her hair as a comforting gesture, strands of it still caught on his rough skin.

She didn't look at him, not even when he took a seat beside her.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked, and then waited for her to respond.

Asking the kids to confide in him didn't come naturally. Jack had prompted it early on, and kept harping until it became habit. The technique worked far better on Rachel than it did on Cam. It astounded him how much easier it could be to deal with a girl just by throwing out a few words of encouragement when compared to dealing with a moody, secretive teenaged son who didn't want to talk about anything.

Rachel propped her jaw on one fist, still not looking at him. "Why do you and mom always get on my case about school?" she asked. "Why can't I be worse at something than Cam? Do you guys think I like not being as smart as he is?"

This argument again? How many times would they have to go through this before the girl grew up and realized how easy school was compared to a harsh life out on her own?

"I think we all know you're smart enough to do just as well as anyone, Rach. You just don't try because you're either pissed at us for pressuring you, or pissed at Cam for setting our expectations so high," he said nonchalantly.

Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him while sharply stabbing the contents of the bowl in front of her with her spoon. "You know, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't go to college right out of high school. You just think it would, because you and mom wouldn't be able to stand the humiliation of having a kid who didn't go on to become a lawyer, or a doctor, or something!"

She had a point. It wouldn't be the end of the world—far from it, in fact. But Jack would kill him if he admitted it. They wanted better lives for their children and grandchildren than they'd had as teenagers.

Or so he'd been told.

Riddick shot his daughter a dull stare. "What do you want me to say? Rachel, you have my permission to go do whatever the hell you want, so long as I don't see you whoring yourself out on a street corner?" She shot him a disgusted look, and he raised a questioning eyebrow in response. "You think I don't notice you hanging on Dallas? Or how about those dumbass jocks from school? Don't tell me you put yourself out there because you just want to be friends."

She threw her spoon down, and it clattered across the table. "I can't believe you'd say that about me!" she shouted, her cheeks reddening from humiliation at the suggestion. Her eyes became overly bright and she stood, stomping toward the stairs and up them. "I hate you!" she shouted, loud enough for the whole house to hear, right before the door to her bedroom slammed shut.

* * *

Cam couldn't believe he'd gotten suckered into going to the mall with his sister.

Mom said you have to take me to the mall and watch out for me, Rachel had informed him the second he'd stumbled down the stairs, still half asleep.

Yeah, like Prize couldn't take care of her. Even though Dallas was blind, he'd sure cleaned Cam's clock.

He dragged his feet all afternoon, making it clear he wouldn't enjoy himself. Rachel refused to notice, leading Dallas along by the arm and showing him off to any of her friends they ran into doing 'back to school shopping.'

Cam hated shopping; he told Dallas so while the two sat on a bench, waiting for Rachel to go to the bathroom.

"You know," Cam started, "there can't be many things in the universe that would waste my time more than babysitting you and my sister, jerk-off. The sooner I get rid of you, the happier I'll be."

Dallas' features immediately dropped the cool, amused look he'd kept up all afternoon, and became like stone. "Who the fuck do you think you're shitting, dude?" the kid shot back. "I haven't touched a car engine for a week-and-a-half, and if I don't get my sight back soon, I'm gonna kill somebody. I like Rachel and all, but I'm fucking tired of getting paraded around. If I lose either of you in this crowd, I'm up shit creek. Now quit bitching, follow my lead, and just maybe we'll get out of here in the next half century."

The two of them sat there silently, and, to Cam's amazement, the color slowly drained out of the younger boy's face. By the time Rachel returned, Dallas had turned white as a sheet.

"Back," she announced, taking a seat between them. "So, you guys ready for more shopping? I really need a new pair of shoes."

Dallas put on a forced smile. "Yeah, sure. That sounds good."

"Great!" she said, preparing to jump to her feet.

"Um, Rach," Cam said, stopping her. "I don't think Dallas looks too good. His concussion might not be completely healed, so you'd better not make him overdo it."

She took a good look at Prize and seemed to realize how pale he appeared. "You do look kind of sick, Dally. Are you sure you're up to more shopping? Cam could drive us home."

Again Dallas attempted to smile. "Na, I'm fine," he said, his words short and raspy. He attempted to get up, his whole body shaking from the effort.

Rachel placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back to a sitting position before he got a chance to fully straighten up. "No, you're not fine. Just take a minute to catch your breath, and we'll go home. Do you think you're well enough to make it to the parking lot, or should Cam go get the car?"

Dallas waved her off with one hand. "I'll be fine, just give me a couple minutes and we'll walk out."

Rachel spent a couple more minutes coddling her patient before deeming him fit for the walk outside. By then some of his color had returned. Cam couldn't believe it; the guy was a professional con artist. He could act for a freaking living!

They'd almost reached the car before Cam noticed anything wrong. A man had followed them from the doors of the mall, staying just at their flank, never turning off and going his own way. A truck pulled up beside them.

Cameron grabbed Rachel and threw her behind a car when the door facing them flew open and men dressed in black piled out. He lashed out at them, sensing Dallas doing the same next to him. Against untrained men they might've had a chance, but these guys had training--and lots of it. Cam attempted a destruction on one of them, attempting to break his arm only to have the move completely backfire, and in a second his opponent used the same technique on him.

Cameron heard his forearm break before he felt it. After that it only took two of them to subdue him and put him in the truck. Surprisingly, it took four men to do the same with Dallas. For a brief moment he hoped against hope that Rachel got away. That hope was crushed when she got thrown in next to them a moment later.


	8. Chapter 8

It felt almost typical, really. Pace arrived with her daughter and Robert Brodell at the specified location—a popular tourist stop at a cultural museum in the capital city. She expected a joyous reunion with her son. Instead, she met a woman holding a young boy. A woman who had silent tears running down her face.

Typical of her life. Another loss, another trial to endure. Initially the weight of it almost crushed her, but after a moment or two of absorbing, her mind distributed the load so she could bear it. She numbed to the point of no feeling.

"Pace?" Robert asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

She nodded. "I'll be fine. It's not like I wasn't prepared for something like this when he ran off in the first place." Getting so close, and then losing him just hours before she arrived—that did hurt. At least, it should've...

If Ticey weren't there, didn't need her to be strong, she might've crumbled immediately. At the first mention of Dallas' fate, her daughter started to sob and sob, just like she had in the days following his hasty departure months ago. Robert, the man who'd come with her for 'morale support,' attempted to comfort the nine-year-old girl, but she turned away from him, reaching up to her mother until the Pace gathered her up in her arms.

"Your name is Jack, isn't it?" Pace asked the grieving mother before her.

Jack was tall for a classic human, but slender. Her hair was a dark brown, her eyes green. A few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes gave away her age, and Pace respected the fact that the woman allowed her wrinkles to show. Most classic humans had access to medical technology that would keep them looking young for decades. Pace and her family struggled to get assistance for medical emergencies.

The little boy Jack held in her arms squirmed to be put down. He seemed unaffected by the disappearance of his two siblings. Perhaps he was too young to realize the seriousness of what happened to them.

"My husband will be home soon from work. I need to consult him before we act. He has—history—with police forces and their operations. He'll know what'll be the best course to take in order to keep the kids safe," Jack said, struggling to keep her voice steady.

Pace nodded, grateful for the fact that this woman realized the potential problems that could result if Dallas were to fall in the hands of Empire authorities. Without contacts to mask his eyes, he might be shot on sight.

"What about your husband?" Jack asked, using one hand to take a Kleenex from her pocket and wipe her nose. "Will he want to know what happened to Dallas?"

The question caught Pace off-guard. For a number of seconds she considered her husband's possible reactions to Dallas getting kidnapped, absently rubbing the rings on her right hand with her thumb.

None of the potential options impressed her.

"I wouldn't know how to reach him," she said, a cold wave washing over her chest. She couldn't deal with marital problems and losing her son in the same day—it just might kill her. "My sister-in-law might know how to find him, but the last time I spoke to him, he made it abundantly clear he has no interest in playing father figure to my son. Unless he's changed his mind since then, I'm not going to bother him with my family's problems."

"Who're you talking about, Mommy?" Ticey asked, her tears slowly drying and her arms still clasped around her mother's neck.

"No one, sweetheart," Pace replied, stroking her daughter's hair. "No one at all."

* * *

Jack brought Dallas' family home with her, in case the kidnappers gave notice for a ransom. Riddick didn't know if he approved of that move or not—he'd fallen too far into shock to care.

Cam and Rachel, his son and daughter, taken without warning or reason. He'd fought with Rachel just that morning, and he hadn't seen Cam at all.

They'd received a short, cryptic email—nothing more. Had someone found him? Someone who held a grudge? Had the people looking for Dallas found them? If so, why take the other two kids? Why not kill them on the spot?

All Riddick could do was speculate, and it did him no good. He sat in a chair with Jack and Kyle on his lap and tried to comfort them, make them feel safe. The thing he desired most was a simple task, anything that would put his energy into motion. He needed to do something to correct this massive injustice. If he didn't find an outlet soon, Riddick didn't know to what lengths hi rage would drive him.

Feelings he hadn't held against other men since his days in slam welled up anew. At one point in his life, this never would've happened. These assholes who decided to fuck with his family had no idea they'd just jumped head-first into an Olympic-sized pool of shit.

If only he knew where they were, so he could strangle them with his bare hands.

Rick could only blame himself. He should've made the smart move and left Dallas for dead in the back halls of that casino. Slow and stupid—that's what he'd become. What had left him so senile and oblivious? A false sense of security that no one could reach him on New Mecca, perhaps? Stressing over work? Obsessing over his newly discovered physical weakness?

The message that came was from Cam. Riddick's son sat bound in a chair. The room behind him was too dark to make out. No bruises marred his face, but he appeared tired, worn. Broken...

"I'm fine, Rachel and Dallas are fine. They say they won't hurt us as long as we don't fight them. These people want ten million common for each of us, and they say one of us will die in exactly six days if you don't come up with the money. They'll tell you later where to deliver it. They're monitoring your financial activities, so they'll know when you have it."

That was it, the message ended. Every adult in the room let out a breath they'd held during the brief message. Jack reached out and touched the monitor where their son's face had been just a second before. She bowed her head, grieving for their lost child.

"We don't have that kind of money," Pace said softly, tears working their way down her pale cheeks. "We don't have enough to get a loan for ten million common. Not even close."

"Neither do we," Riddick admitted absently, his mind scrambling to piece together some solution to this problem.

"Maybe I should call the authorities," Jack said, looking around to judge the reaction to the suggestion.

Riddick noted Dallas' mother stiffened in her seat, just as he did. After that, Jack mentioned it no more.

A foreboding silence fell over the living room, broken only by the sound of Kyle's soft breathing. The boy slept in his mother's arms.

The doorbell rang and Jack gasped. Before Riddick could speak, his wife left their young son on his lap, dashing off to answer the door.

"Who are you?" Jack asked the person at the door.

"I need to speak with you and your husband," a young male voice insisted. He must've pushed past Jack, because her protests followed the young man into the living room.

Riddick gently pushed Kyle from his lap and got to his feet, eyeing the young man who'd come into his household uninvited. Rick recognized him from the casino, when he'd first met Dallas. It was Chris-the-probable-merc.

"Who are you," Riddick said, demanding instead of asking. "You almost fooled me once, but this time your story better be damn convincing, because if it isn't..."

'Chris' immediately came to attention, head up, chest out. Perfectly professional in every way. "Lance Corporal Christopher Valence, of the Empire Special Forces. I go by the alias 'Killer Cody Vale.' I'm AWOL from a classified unit called the Tiger Sharks, and working as an independent enforcer," he responded sharply, not bothering with any bullshit this time around.

Riddick snorted at the kid's snappy reply, just restraining himself from letting his features shape into a sneer. "Let me guess. They trained you to hunt down and capture dangerous men in order to keep the fine citizens of the Empire safe."

A ghost of a smirk graced the young man's features. "Actually, sir, they were trying to keep the Empire's citizens safe from me. I got the name 'Killer Cody' while sitting on death row in Slammer Six," Vale said, not in the least intimidated.

Riddick's cool gaze never left the face of the deceptively guiltless young man standing in the middle of the room. The kid wasn't innocent. The little freak didn't even appear to be exaggerating.

"Didn't know they let non-humans into the military," he commented, basing his assumption of the boy's species on the fact that NO classical human EVER got sent to the numbered prisons.

Vale smirked. "They don't. The day I began to serve, I ceased to exist, sir."

Riddick nodded, wondering just how cautious he needed to be with this new arrival.

What the fuck had he brought upon them?

"All right. Now I know who you are. Why are you here? Why should I allow you to continue breathing?" he growled. To his own ears he sounded threatening. Vale's expression didn't change an iota, but the boy tucked his chin maybe a millimeter, giving the impression of sending a defiant glare in Riddick's direction.

"My sister-in-law must've hired him," Pace said coldly, her angry gaze focused on Vale. "What I really want to know is the whereabouts of your partner, Cody. My son is missing, and I feel we should discuss our options—together."

"I'm the face of the team, you talk to me," Cody responded, his voice equally cool. He gave Pace a look out of the corner of his eye, and crossed his arms over his chest to put emphasis on the finality of his statement.

Riddick hadn't taken much notice of this woman, Pace, before that moment, but suddenly he realized the error he'd made there. She was dangerous. He could see it in her blue eyes. When she asked a question, she expected answers, not a runaround. Airs of authority like that didn't come to a person naturally.

"Vale, if he's here and you don't tell me, I will end you. You know the skill set I have. Don't make me use it on you," Pace growled, her eyes flashing with a madness Riddick had only seen up-close a few times before.

Johns gave him a look like that one on more than one occasion—but then Johns had been a complete sociopath.

So had Conte.

At that moment a shadow in the hallway shifted closer to them, and the sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps interrupted their conversation. "You won't have to do that, Pace. The kid was a Shark. You can't threaten a Shark into giving you information—we've already been to hell, and clawed our way back."

_Speak of the devil,_ Rick thought, his chest tightening upon hearing that voice.

Dominic Conte stepped out of his cloak of shadow, and back into the life of Richard B. Riddick for the first time in over twenty years.

If he'd had a weapon in hand, Riddick would've killed the son-of-a-bitch on sight.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN:**

**To Cathy, who left the review w/o an email on All the King's Horses yesterday:** I hope you read this, because I'd like to say I absolutely agree with you. I did make Riddick rather ridiculous in All the King's Horses. I felt that was what made saving him such a challenge for Jack, and I'm sorry you didn't see it the same way. I'm also sorry you read all 52 chapters only to find you really didn't like the story, or the ending. I've been extremely negligent in editing the earlier parts of that story on fanfic dot net, and I'm sure that didn't improve your reading experience. I know it's difficult for readers to find good fanficion that fits with their particular tastes, and I wish you luck in finding something you do like. There are lots of good authors in the Pitch Black fandom, and you can find many of them on the Art of Vin Diesel site, and the Rhiana Griffith fan site.

**To Scary Vampiress:** Welcome back! Thank you so much for the compliments, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story. I'd kind of forgotten I was writing this until you reviewed it. I hope some of your other favorite fics updated/finished too so you'll have plenty of reading to do. I know the Pitch Black fandom has kind of died off in popularity. Pretty much all of the big hitters have either quit writing in the fandom, or just quit writing.

* * *

Pace nearly forgot Robert sitting at her side. She remembered briefly, after the initial shock, thrill, and horror of seeing Dom in person for the first time in nearly a decade.

"Rob, could you take Ticey outside? I don't want her to hear any of this," she said softly, her eyes never falling from the man standing just meters away.

"Mom, I want to stay with you. I don't want..."

She shushed her daughter, asking her nicely to go with their family friend, to be a big girl and not make a fuss. Ticey went, and when she was gone Pace joined those in the room who preferred to stand, her fists clenching at her sides.

Dom shot a brief, cocky smirk in her general direction. "Hey, babe. Told you I'd see you again."

"You did not!" Jack and Pace both said in stereo.

Ice passed through her veins, and into her heart. Pace turned to look at Jack, and Jack to look at her. They both knew this man intimately; he'd used the same pet name on both of them in the past. She'd known her husband had philandered much of his life, she'd just never expected to meet one of his old flames in the flesh.

The mixed feelings that passed through her made her want to both kill and die in the same instant. No matter what she told herself, she still loved him. Until that moment in time, she'd still wanted him back. Now, she didn't know if she could ever want anything again.

What a fool he'd made of her.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and for the first time in days she couldn't hold them back. "You son-of-a-bitch," she said, her vision blurring, nose burning.

She meant to simply walk past him, shouldering him out of her path, but he didn't budge. He stood firm, as if to make her walk around him.

The next thing she knew she was throwing uppercuts into his gut, using all her strength to try to make him feel her pain.

"He's your son! He's your son, and you don't give a fuck that he's gone! I swear to God, I'll fucking kill you, Dominic, I swear!"

Dom restrained her, grabbing her wrists and squeezing until the pain made her cry out. He had shades on, but it didn't matter. She'd never been able to read his eyes, even when they'd loved each other.

"I'm not here to toy around with you, Pace," Dominic growled, throwing her to the floor. In attempting to break her fall, she landed on her wrist, and heard it pop on impact. She gritted her teeth against the pain that shot up her arm, curling up in a ball on the floor.

Immediately Dom had Riddick in his face, shoving him away from her. When Conte stepped forward, drawing up to his full height, Riddick stood right in front of the Con-X and stared him down, not batting an eye at the obvious threat in Dom's stance.

"It's not your problem," her husband informed her protector.

Riddick leveled a cool stare at the man in front of him. "I'm not in the habit of permitting spousal abuse in my home," he growled softly.

A long silence passed between them, the air grew heavy with intensity. Finally, Conte backed down, nodding toward the door. He left, Cody followed.

When they were gone, Pace slowly sat up, wiping at the tears threatening to fall from her eyes. She shared silence with Riddick and Jack for a long time before speaking. "I really hate to say it, but we're probably going to need him before this is over. I'm not really sure there's anyone in this room capable of talking him off his high horse."

"I am," Jack said suddenly, her eyes never lifting from the floor. "I've done it before, when the lives of my children weren't on the line."

"Jack, I don't think that's a good idea," Riddick said.

She shook her head defiantly. "No, I'll do it. If we can't get the money, and we can't call the police, then we need a criminal worse than the people we're dealing with. We need him."

Pace forced herself to get to her feet, clutching her injured hand to her chest. She carefully avoided looking at the woman sitting across the room from her. A woman she hardly knew, who proclaimed she could talk Dom into reasonability.

Immeasurable jealousy welled up inside her, boiling over into hate that threatened to consume her. Pace had a big enough heart to forgive Jack, no matter what kind of relationship she'd had with Dom. It just hurt to know other women could have even a simple friendship with him, when she'd just literally been cast aside.

Even after all these years, her broken heart had never mended.

* * *

It took some time to settle Dallas' mother and little sister into the guest room for the night. Mr. Brodell opted to find an inn to stay at. Jack could tell Robert saw Pace as much more than a friend. If Pace felt anything for him in return, Jack saw no evidence of it.

Dallas had two parents, a mother and a father, who on the outside appeared polar opposites. His mother appeared to love his father. His father probably didn't love anybody.

She's bound to hate me, Jack thought. I'll have to tell her. In the morning, I'll tell her it wasn't serious. We were seventeen. _All we did was kiss a few times. Conte used me, just like he uses everyone. He used me and Riddick to get at a man, to kill him. We were nothing but bait... God, I hope she understands..._

She settled Kyle into bed; her and Riddick's bed, covering him with almost enough blankets to smother him.

"You're not seein' him."

Jack turned, her green eyes narrowing fractionally as she took up a defensive stance, preparing to war verbally with Rick. He stood just inside the doorway, shutting it so their guests wouldn't overhear the heated conversation about to take place.

"You really think that's an option at this point?" she asked. "I said we should call the police, and I didn't exactly hear you jumping to agree with me. So what's the plan? Huh? How're you going to get the kids back?"

His mouth thinned to a line, his jaw working as he glared holes through her with brown eyes. "Do we remember the same fucking guy, Jack? Dominic Conte? Being an assassin isn't much better than being a merc. Half the time you don't even get paid better. Is that who you want to send after our son and daughter? A fucking merc, Jack!" he yelled, having stalked over so his face hovered right above hers.

Her eyes flashed, and she could feel the heat of her anger rising into her cheeks and the tips of her ears. It broke her heart, but she couldn't back down. She had to beat him in this argument, humiliate him if that's what it took. "He was never a merc, Riddick. Not even I'm dumb enough to almost give my virginity to a merc. He was an assassin—the best fucking assassin in the fucking galaxy. You were an old pro at mind games, and he sure made you look stupid, didn't he? He's a criminal prodigy. We know what he could do at seventeen; just imagine what he can do now."

"I know exactly what a man like that is capable of. I was just like him, remember?" he hissed, turning away.

"Bullshit," she shot back. "That's bullshit, and you know it! You were never like him. Dom used us..."

"Like I used Johns?" he asked, looking at her out of the corner of his eye over his shoulder. "Like I used Imam's charges? They were nothing to me but bait to keep those fucking hammerheads off my back!"

She shook her head as if to deny his claim. "No, you didn't! You're not like him, Riddick. You've changed. You changed for me, so we could be together and live a normal life! You have to trust me now," she said, approaching him, attempting to reach out and touch his arm.

He pulled away from her, shooting a glare through her, freezing her in her tracks. "I wouldn't have changed for anyone. We both know that. So, you're going to go find him and offer him what? Sex? I knew dangerous men turned you on, Jackie. Didn't figure you needed to trade me in for a new model," he growled coldly.

Her eyes went wide with shock. "Is that what you think? I'll track him down so I can fuck him? Our kids are missing, Rick, do you really think I've got sex on my mind right now!"

He shrugged. "Don't know. His wife sure shot you a mean look. Almost like you scare her. Makes me wonder if there's more to what happened between you and Conte than I know."

Her hands flexed into fists. In such a desperate situation all Rick could worry about was whether or not she'd actually been a virgin their first time?

Instead of screaming at him, she picked up her sweater and opened the door of their bedroom, slamming it behind her. Jack was done asking for permission from a man who couldn't trust her, even after everything they'd been through together.


	10. Chapter 10

Jack walked out the front door, a piece of paper with directions to Conte's ship clasped in her hand. She'd found the location of Dom's ship at the landing yards on the net. Even after so many years, she still remembered his call sign--it didn't take a detective to track him down with it. She took her car and reached the field ten minutes later, walking boldly up to the lot she'd sought out, and pressing the button on the comm.

The young man, Vale, opened the ramp without answering. She figured he'd probably seen her on a vid screen inside.

Jack took a tentative step up the ramp, eyeing the young blond before her. He was a hair shorter than her, but his arms boasted the potential for tremendous strength. If he'd been in a military unit with Dom, he probably wasn't human. Thinking back on it, none of the people who'd visited her house that night were human either. Pace and her daughter certainly weren't.

"You here to see Kade?" Cody finally asked, moving the toothpick he chewed on from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue.

Jack nodded once, only momentarily confused as to who he spoke of. To her dismay, Vale didn't budge. He merely squinted at her, reaching up with both hands to grab the low rafters and let some of his weight hang from them. He seemed to size her up, at last sighing and looking away. Jack judged his age at early twenties. He was a handsome youth; unlike Dom and Riddick, he still had a touch of boyish softness in his face. His physique appeared solid and firm, but without hard angles.

"Listen, Lady, part of this is my fault," he finally said, sounding airily apologetic. "I was supposed to get Dallas Prize off the lunar casino and onto this ship ten days ago, but I blew the mission. Kade acted like he didn't give a damn. I didn't know Dallas was his son before tonight, but when I saw him at the Bijou, I thought he might be."

"He looks like Dom."

"He looks like me," Cody retorted, as though stating the obvious. "If I were several inches taller, and built like a truck, we'd be twins."

After a pause, Jack bit her lip, still considering the whirling implications of Cody's words, but decided she'd better not waste any more time trying to sort it out in her mind. Dallas and Cody did share similar hair color and dark eyes, but Cody could pass for human. He had pupils, and his iris color was a deep brown, not that impossible shade of black.

"I have to speak with Dom," she said, after carefully wetting her lips with her tongue. "It's important."

Cody chuckled morbidly, shaking his head a little. "This is such bad timing. I can't believe I'm even considering it."

Jack's brow creased. "What?" she asked, confused.

His hands fell to his sides after a leisurely stretch, and then Cody Vale turned to lead her into the depths of his home. "He kills like he's got ice in his veins," he said to her over his shoulder. "But he most definitely gives a damn. I don't know what's going on with him, but he's gotten bad. Real bad."

They veered right, coming to a sealed door. Cody raised his hand as if to knock, but paused, turning to look at her over his shoulder. "You might want to stand off to the side a little," he said.

"Why?" Jack asked.

Cody's eyebrows knitted together in a morbidly sarcastic expression. "By now he's probably drunk, and who knows what else. Last time I tried to wake him up like this I came within one armor-piercing round of an early grave. When we replaced this door, he made sure the steel wasn't so thick. You know, so if someone tries to break in, he can kill them before they break the seal."

"Oh," Jack said. She cautiously moved off to the side, pressing her back against the wall.

Cody positioned himself on the other side of the door, reaching out to knock tentatively. "Yo, Kade. Jack Riddick's here to see you," he called. "You still living, man?"

After several more minutes of incessant knocking, Dom finally came to the door and opened it. He looked trashed, sick, and was only half dressed.

"What t' fuck do you want?" he asked, squinting at her while letting his weight settle heavily against the steel door frame. An empty liquor bottle slipped from his hand and crashed to the floor without catching his notice.

Jack crossed her arms over her chest, attempting to stare him down. "I've had a really hard fucking day, Conte, and I want a fucking drink. Think you can handle that?"

Dom ran one hand down his face, then back through his mussed hair. Dark circles had appeared under his eyes in the hours since he'd visited her house, and his normally pale skin had turned gray.

"You heard the woman, Vale. Get her a drink," he said at last.

* * *

  
"You know, we were sort of under the impression you died some time ago, Dom," Jack pointed out, taking a sip of the whiskey in front of her.

Dom shrugged, nursing his bottle. With his fast metabolism, it took a great deal of alcohol to keep sobriety away. The incredible tolerance he'd built over the past five years didn't exactly help. "I did die, for a while. Regular Marines raided the Resistance base I happened to be on. I killed maybe half a dozen before they overwhelmed me. Beat my face in, collapsed one of my lungs, partially collapsed the other, and broke every bone they could. I should've died, but they decided to rebuild me, wipe my memory clean, and use me as a killing machine in the Special Forces. That's when I met Vale."

"Why does he call you Kade?" she asked.

He could tell she'd been itching to ask that question since she showed up on his ship.

Dom shrugged, cracking his neck to one side then the other. "It was my name for two years. Sergeant Dominic Kade. Kid couldn't get used to calling me 'Conte' when we met up again. Took him a while just to drop the 'Yes, Sergeant' bullshit he kept giving me. He was eighteen when I met him—made a big impression on him, apparently. To Vale it's only been two or three years since we served together. He traveled in cryo a lot on missions, so for everyone else, it's been at least thirteen years." he said, taking another drink, and then letting the bottle come to rest on his knee.

"Were you married then?" she asked, sounding both distraught and curious. "When they captured you?" Her soft eyes stared in his direction, but Dom couldn't tell if he was the one she saw in front of her.

"Yeah," he said, absentmindedly reaching for the tags that rested on his toned, bare chest. His fingers played across the dull metal of a wedding ring hanging from his chain. "I married Pace almost a year before they caught me. I met her after I got busted at eighteen. A mob boss named Ashton bought me off a bounty hunter named Je Marshal on his way to collect the price on my head. Ol' Ash put me up in his office as a trophy, in a tank of loc gel. Pace was a thief working for the Resistance. She saw me in there while she was robbing Ashton, and she decided to save me. I'm scared to death of drowning, and for a while after she got me out I thought she must've been some sort of angel sent to watch over me. My psychosis was running out of control back then, so she's pretty lucky to be alive right now. I think she might've been fourteen. We got married some four years later, when she was legal.

"I've gotta admit, at first glance through all that loc gel, she did remind me a little of you, Jackie," he said, taking a swig and wiping his mouth on the back of his arm.

She nodded, looking perturbed.

Dom shook his head, picking up on her line of thought from her body language. Jack had interpreted his words to mean he'd become obsessed with her, and used Pace as a stand-in. "Don't get me wrong, Jack. I liked you, but you're not Pace. My head gets pretty fucked up sometimes—but she's not you, either. Pacey—she balanced me," he said, staring at the bottle sitting precariously on the tips of two of his fingers—an example of the equilibrium he referred to.

Jack drained her drink, sitting up to let her elbows rest on the table. She stuck one finger in her empty glass and let it swing around in a small circle, the condensation on the glass bottom making a clover pattern on the table. "So what about Dallas? Is he yours?"

He took a drink, chuckled morbidly, the buzz of alcohol subtly twisting his humor. "When I married Pace, there were people around me who didn't like me very much." He shot her a mischievous look. "Bet that's pretty hard for you to believe, huh?"

Jack rolled her eyes in response.

"Some of these people wanted me out of the way, but they didn't want to tangle with me. When I left on a mission they paid a pretty young woman to convince my new wife that I'd cheated on her, didn't want her, whatever. She ran. It took me three months to find her, beat to hell and pregnant in a holding facility at a lane checkpoint. They think that traumatic first trimester is the reason Dallas was born blind," he said, wondering why he'd chosen to tell her this story. It so clearly said my kid's stone blind, and I'm still busted up over it because I know it's my fault. He'd done a lot of crap in his life, but Pace running from him definitely topped the 'shit he wished he couldn't remember list.' So many other things got lost when the Army modded him. Why did that memory have to resurface with crystal clarity?

"She swore up and down the kid was mine, but I still had the doc run a paternity test." Dom didn't continue, allowing her to draw her own conclusions about the test results, and the damage he'd done by not taking Pace at her word.

Jack took a deep breath and cleared her throat, clearly pushed beyond her comfort zone by a gut-spilling, honest Dominic Conte. "Okay, so we know for sure he is yours—how exactly do you feel about the fact he could be lying in some ditch right now with his throat cut?" she asked, sitting back in her chair and staring at him.

She gave him a few minutes to think about it, but for Dom there wasn't any need. He'd forced himself to detach from the kid emotionally years ago. The image he conjured in his mind of Dallas' body didn't bring forth any particularly strong emotions. He couldn't even imagine what the kid looked like anymore.

He shrugged. "Can't really say I feel anything. I don't even know Dallas. If he's a corpse, he's a corpse just like any other I've ever seen."

"So you won't help us find him, get him back from these kidnappers?" Jack asked, sounding neither angry nor distressed.

He wondered if she knew how much she'd grown up. At seventeen she'd been strong, but not this strong.

"Never said that," he reminded, taking another swig from his bottle. "A job's a job. My sister paid an advance on Pace's behalf to find the kid. A rescue operation costs extra, but it'll be a super bargain compared to thirty million. At most I'll charge you seven to ten grand, depending on how many people I need to bribe. In the morning I'll get on analyzing the message they sent. If we're lucky, I'll pick up a trace back to where the signal originated from. In a day or two I should have a location, and then we can figure out strategy."

"You do know that in six days they're going to kill one of our kids, don't you?"

"I heard. Cameron will die first, Dallas second, Rachel third. That should create the most dramatic effect while keeping both families involved in the ransom process for as long as possible. It surprised me that..." he trailed off, and his eyes slowly glassed over. A strange feeling came over him. One that instilled a nearly forgotten sense of horror from his past.

"Dom?" Jack asked after a moment. "Hey, you with me?"

He shook his head, trying to clear it. "Did you let Pace stay in your house?" he asked, brow furrowing. A deep pounding had started at the back of his skull, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol in his system.

Jack sat up, looking baffled. "Yeah. She was so tired we thought it would be best. She fell asleep the second her head hit the pillow."

He got to his feet, knocking his chair over in the process. "Take me there, now," he ordered, walking back to his room and returning seconds later after throwing on a jacket and picking up his boots.

Jack still sat at the table, stunned. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He didn't even throw a glance back at her as he made his way to the aft ramp. "It's complicated," he shouted back.

Finally realizing she was getting left behind, he heard Jack jump to her feet and run after him.


	11. Chapter 11

He fidgeted the whole ride, biting his knuckles like a dog gnawing on a bone. Jack suspected he chewed on himself to keep her from hearing his teeth chatter. He had to be cold, wearing only a light canvas jacket over his bare upper body.

He tried to jump out of the car when she pulled up in the driveway, but the doors were child locked, and he couldn't get out without help from outside. Jack had planned it that way, wanting an answer before she let him back into her house and in contact with the wife he'd physically assaulted earlier that evening.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked, hitting the engine shutdown on the dash and turning to look at him.

Quickly realizing he was trapped, Dom turned those frightening demon eyes on her. "You won't believe me unless you see it for yourself," he said, his tone lowering to a threatening pitch.

Jack glared right back at him in the dimly lit car, unafraid. "When I was thirteen I almost got eaten by a giant chicken. Try me, Dominic, just try me."

He growled deep in his chest, a sound that Jack remembered him making when they were young. Only he'd never used it to sound quite so irritated back then...

"Dallas was born blind."

"I know."

"He never had a single operation done on his eyes."

"What about when they put in the implants in?"

"What implants," he stated deadpan, letting heavy silence blanket her so she could think about the fact that he wasn't asking a question.

Jack shook her head. "I don't understand. He got his sight back through some medical miracle. He tells people his eyes look weird because he has implants. So what? Is he supposed to tell people the supposedly dead Con-X is his father, and that means he isn't exactly human?"

Dom turned an empty gaze toward the front windshield, his dark features helping him fade into the shadows. "I'm not saying his eyes got better. He can see, but not really. Not like you see, not like I see, not like anyone in the universe sees. His optic nerves never developed, but when he got old enough, his mind compensated.

"The last time I saw Dallas, he was five years old. Bounty hunters had tracked me down, and they caught me when I tried to escape with him. They threw me against a wall, lined up and laughed about how they were going to kill me execution-style—put me down like a rabid dog. I had Dallas in my arms, and I tried to protect him with my body when they opened fire, but the bullets dropped to the floor before hitting me. It was like some invisible wall stopped all those bullets, because Dallas willed them to stop. His sight is a minor side effect of some talent I can't even fathom.

"There're only two things I know for sure about what Dally's got. First of all, I know it's genetic. And second of all—I know he sure as fuck didn't get it from me."

* * *

  
The air in Jack's house smelled mildly like ozone, but other than that everything appeared in order. From the looks of things, everyone was in bed, asleep.

Jack didn't tell Dom where to go, he just knew. She followed right on his heels up the steps, and down the hall toward the guest bedroom. It was harder for her to keep up with him than she remembered.

He threw open the door and entered the room. Jack tried to peer around his broad frame. In the darkness she glimpsed Pace thrashing against the confines of her blankets. She'd sweated through her t-shirt, and woken her daughter.

"Mommy, please wake up. Please," the girl begged, trying to shake her mother from the nightmare she suffered.

Dom sat down on the edge of the bed, taking his wife's face gently between his hands, brushing her wet hair behind her ears. "Wake up, Pacey. Come on, baby, wake up," he whispered.

After a moment she stilled, her head turning first one way and then the other. Slowly, her eyes opened.

"Domy?" she whispered.

"I'm here, baby. You're safe. It was just a dream."

"Domy," she choked, rising to wrap her arms around his neck. She sobbed while he pulled her onto his lap, holding her tight to his body. The way she cried and cried, Jack wondered if she'd ever be able to stop.

She's suffered so much before today, and it broke down her defenses. Poor woman. She lost her son and husband long before now. Me? I'm just in shock. I act like I expect Cam and Rachel to try sneaking in without Riddick hearing any minute. For Pace it's already sunk in that she might never see Dallas again.

Jack decided to give this broken family their peace, turning to go. Before she left, she noticed the entire room was in disarray, like a tornado had gone through and made a mess of everything.

She couldn't help but wonder how Dom had known Pace needed him so desperately.


	12. Chapter 12

Jack could tell Riddick was still pissed the second she walked into the bedroom. Kyle slept next to where his father sat, propped up, pretending to read the tablet he held when she found them.

"Mission accomplished," she said tentatively, tossing her sweater in the general direction of an empty laundry basket.

Rick didn't even act like he'd heard her. He just put down the tablet and reached over to turn off the lamp. He turned onto his side, his back to her and Kyle. Taking off her shoes and replacing her slacks with sweatpants, Jack let her tired body sink into her side of the bed. She let her arm come to rest around the only child she still had and sighed heavily, wondering how ugly things would get before they started to get better. If they ever got better...

"He's ex-military, he's got a million contacts in the underground, and I don't think I'd shed a tear for him if he died saving Cam and Rachel. Right now he's the only chance we've got. If you'd like to suggest a backup plan, I'm all ears."

"I don't trust him," Riddick growled, not even bothering to turn over and face her.

Jack propped her chin up on her fist, taking a moment to pause and look down at her sleeping son, wishing she could experience the peace of his ignorance, just this once. Riddick probably thought she went to Conte because she didn't have faith in him anymore. Little did he know, she never would've left the only baby she had left with anyone else in the universe that night. Not Conte, not anyone. She knew she'd return and find Kyle safe, because his father would be with him.

"No one trusts him. You saw how Pace treated him tonight. She's just as wary as we are, but even she knows he's the right guy for the job."

"He'll probably end up getting himself, Dallas, and both our kids killed. Is that what you want, Jack?" he demanded, finally sitting up and turning to glare at her in the darkness. "Is it?"

Jack slowly shook her head. "No, I don't want that. Today I failed as a mother. Until Dallas left, I should've kept the kids here. I thought they'd be safe in a public place with Cam watching them, but obviously I was wrong. Whatever happens to them, I'm going to have to live with it; but I don't have to send you off to die with them if that's their fate. Is that what you want, Riddick?" she demanded, sounding more cool and calculating than she felt.

_I learned that from Rick..._ she realized. He'd always been able to hide his hurt and pain behind bluntness.

"I want them back, and I don't want their lives to rest in fucking Conte's hands!"

"He loves Dallas just as much as you love Cam and Rachel. He won't fail, I know he won't," Jack whispered, trying to reassure them both.

"Yeah, he told you that? He told you he loves his kid? I'm under the impression he didn't even tell his fucking wife that he gives a shit about Dallas!"

"Then why's he working with Vale? Why do you think Dom trusts him? Cody has bleach blond hair and dark brown eyes. He reminds Conte of his son. That's how I know he's onboard, even if he won't admit it."

"That's a pretty big leap, Jack."

"I know," she said quickly, trying so hard to express how she felt. "It's just--he's changed. If you'd seen him tonight, Rick, you'd know it too. He seems—grounded. Some really bad things happened to him, I think. Things we can't imagine even after all we've been through.

"He'll get them back. I know he will."

* * *

It took Jack hours to stop tossing and turning. He'd laid still, feigning sleep. Riddick wasn't sure how he'd missed it, but things had changed between him and Jack. It wasn't just the kids disappearing—it went deeper than that. The events of the day just brought it to the fore, forced him to see it.

There'd always been times when he wondered how they'd come so far together. His initial impression of her was a fourteen-year-old girl on the run, trying to hide her sex and weaknesses. Protecting her became important to him. They got on well—struck up conversation easily. She hadn't threatened him; made the best company he'd kept in over a decade. He came to respect her for her selflessness—her willingness to die for anyone who offered her some semblance of caring. He'd seen flashes of that same strength in Carolyn and it impressed him. Enough that he eventually came to believe he'd die for Jack if the need ever arose.

He'd played cat and mouse with the Empire's authorities for some time before the crash, and the game had worn him down. By the time he'd reached T2 with Johns, he'd been so close to breaking he could taste it. If he got stuck in one more pen there wouldn't be another daring escape. He'd become so tired, so numb he just didn't care anymore. About anything.

He'd believed people couldn't change.

Carolyn proved him wrong.

He'd believed he couldn't care about anything, take up a cause, he'd simply become too jaded.

Jack proved him wrong.

No matter how strong and isolated he'd become, it was a big, lonely universe. After getting a taste of having a companion, a friend on his level, that's when his life regained meaning. It was worth living as a free man if he could laugh and joke with Jack, and let her introduce him to the enjoyable aspects of society he'd missed all his life.

Then they'd been apart for a long time, and when he saw her again things had changed. She'd become the strong one, and he'd become weak.

If Riddick had been aware of how far he'd fallen, if he'd seen himself through Jack's eyes at that time, he would've turned and left without a glance back.

She didn't. She stayed and saved him. She chose him over another man—even though Riddick deserved to lose her. She married him in order to protect him from the Empire's forces, risking her own safety to do so. In her late teens, she put up with an awkward marriage of convenience to protect him—never knowing if he was about to leave her and go back out into the universe on his own.

It took nearly two years for them to consummate their marriage. Even after that, Riddick hadn't been entirely sure he'd stay with her forever. Ever since they'd returned to New Mecca and started over he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop. After making love to his wife for the first time, he became increasingly paranoid—sure something would come along and disrupt the calm they'd built for themselves.

More than a year passed and Jack got pregnant with Cam. She survived both pregnancy and childbirth and their lives became so busy he didn't have time to worry anymore. It hadn't been until some years later, shortly after Rachel was born, that he'd realized they'd actually made it. They'd married, had two children, started careers as honest workers, and nothing had come along to destroy it. They were happy together. He enjoyed Jack's company and no longer imagined living without it. Not because she worshiped him, but because she'd seen him on his knees and instead of tearing out his throat—she'd helped him back to his feet.

She was his strength. Danger hadn't approached them for a long time, but now that it had Riddick needed to step forward and put himself between that danger and his family. He liked to believe he hadn't completely civilized. That rage that drove him for so many years lay dormant—but once it returned nothing would stand in his way.

Jack didn't understand. She had once, but she didn't anymore. He was a man who lived by a certain code—and according to that code, anyone who stole a child sacrificed their right to live. Nothing would stop him from slaughtering the people who'd taken their children. Nothing. Not his own fear of dying, and certainly not Jack's fear of losing him.

This was too big, too important.


	13. Chapter 13

"Need any help with that?" Pace asked, referring to her husband's work decoding the information packets that came attached to the headers of the ransom messages the Riddicks received. She hadn't quite entered the den where Dom sat in front of a vid screen, intent on his work.

"Na, Pace. We've got it," he replied absently.

A pause ensued, after which, Pace posed another question. "Ticey wants to know what to call you," she said, feeling some warmth in her cheeks. She didn't know how he'd react to this. "I didn't tell her we're married, but she's curious about you anyway. I think she likes you a little," she told him, smiling shyly at the thought.

Dom paused in his scrolling, taking a moment to mull the question over. He glanced at her over his shoulder. "She can call me Dominic," he finally decreed. He turned back to the screen, acting like Pace no longer existed since he'd provided an answer to her question.

Her head dropped slightly and her eyes fell shut. At some point in her life she might've cried upon realizing he'd managed to pull another fast one on her.

He'd broken her out of a hellish nightmare the night before, acted like the loving husband she remembered, and then gave her the cold shoulder at breakfast. Yes, she might've cried when she was eighteen—after they'd just gotten married. She might've cried at twenty-one—shortly after his first return to her life. She might've even cried at twenty-five—when he left her for the second time. The night before, she would've cried, having reached her mid-thirties.

This morning, there were no tears left to shed for a man who didn't want her.

"How old are you, Dom?" she whispered, truly curious to know. Ten years had passed for her, but he'd hardly changed. Last she'd seen him, he'd been approximately twenty-eight, and hadn't looked a day over twenty-five.

He rolled his thick shoulders backward, cracking his spine. Everything about the way he moved indicated agitation to her. "I've got a better question for you, Pace," he said, sounding cool, but he didn't take his eyes off the screen and turn to look at her. "What the fuck are you doing with some guy who isn't even a member of your own race? Who the fuck is he, and why are you traveling under his name?"

Pace shrugged, even though he couldn't see it, letting her weight come to rest against the door jamb. "He's a classic human who likes me. His name is Robert Brodell, and I met him in a grad class I audited a few years ago. He's come over for dinner on occasion ever since. Every few weeks we get together for lunch. He's gotten to know Dallas and Tice. He wanted to come, support us while we searched for Dallas."

"He's ten years younger than you."

"Which would make him fifteen years younger than you should be, and five years younger than you are, right, Dom? You taught me to use all resources I have to my advantage, and in this case I'm using them brilliantly. I am a woman of a persecuted race; he's a nondescript man with no police record, and a good line of credit. What do you think I'm doing traveling under his name? I'm protecting myself and my daughter the only way I can."

Dom didn't answer, didn't even seethe with rage the way she expected. When they were young, he'd relentlessly go after any guy who dared approach her like a pitbull. Sometimes he'd get so jealous it frightened her.

Pace looked down at the forms in her hand. She'd almost forgotten them, had been on her way to toss them in the nearest disposal unit. "Tell me why you care what I'm doing with Rob," she said softly.

"None of my business what you're doing with him," Dom replied calmly, like he really meant it. "It's not like I ever stayed faithful for long."

She nodded, not so much to agree with him, but to reassure herself she'd expected his answer. Pace approached her husband, placing one hand on his shoulder and pressing the papers against his broad chest until his hand rose to replace hers, keeping them from falling to the floor.

Pace leaned down to speak softly in his ear. "Now it's none of your business, Dominic. I already signed them. Make sure you leave them with me before you walk out of my life again." With that she exited the room, her eyes dry and her chin pushed stubbornly forward.

* * *

  
When Riddick forced himself to get out of bed and go downstairs, he found Conte sitting at his kitchen table, staring off at nothing. He tried to not let it bother him when those black pits that passed for eyes among the Rysen slowly turned on him, taking him in for no more than four or five seconds before shifting away in dismissal.

"Hard to imagine, isn't it? At one point you thought I was just some punk kid," Dom opined, his fingers lacing together in the short, jet black hair at the back of his head.

"You're still a punk; and as far as I can tell, Conte, you're still a kid," Riddick growled, taking a seat across from the Con-X. He didn't know where the hell everyone went, but the house seemed empty. All the better to get this confrontation over and done with while there were no witnesses to interrupt.

Conte motioned with his head toward the den. "Vale's working on locating where the messages we got came from. He's good at picking through that shit. Pace is better, but right now she's too emotional. She'd miss something."

Riddick glared at him, unable to believe how at ease this man seemed in a place where he didn't belong. Other people probably would've mistaken that ease for ignorance, but not Rick, and definitely not with Conte.

"Dallas must've gotten it from her," he said. "The emotion, not the attention to detail. You know, for a while there I was almost convinced he couldn't possibly be related to you. He's too decent to deserve a fuck-up like Dominic Conte for a father."

A lazy smile spread across Dom's face. He began to chuckle, deep in his chest. "Like you're a real gem, Riddick. You know what surprised me? You're actually stupid enough to live here under your own name in this day and age," he shot back, still keeping any trace of aggression from shaping his features.

Riddick shrugged. He could play it cool. As much as he hated it, the only way to beat Conte was by resisting the temptation to get angry. "Sometimes it's better to hide in plain sight. I have a family, a steady job. In a universe this big, people just assume the name's a coincidence. There are millions of people registered with Riddick as their surname, and thousands of them share the first name 'Richard.'"

Conte's grin slowly grew bigger and a spark appeared in his eyes that almost made Riddick shiver. It felt like the other man could see right through him, knew exactly what he felt and thought. If he could've grabbed a knife and ended Conte's life in that moment, he would've done it without hesitation. At least, he thought he would've. It'd been a long time since he'd held another life in his hands.

"You know what I just realized about you, Riddick?" Dom asked, showing off the shark-like smile he probably saved exclusively for potential prey, people he wanted to intimidate.

Riddick decided he wouldn't be intimidated. Not by anyone. He used to do intimidation for a fucking living.

"What?" he responded appropriately, positive he didn't want to know.

Conte tilted his head back slightly, giving the impression of looking down on him, like Kyle might look down on a bug right before smashing it beneath his shoe.

"You hate it here. The job, the family. I spent half the night trying to figure it out, and now I think I know why you ended up a desk jockey. You lost sight of the difference between doing what's easy, and doing what comes naturally. Deep down, you miss it, don't you? Toying with mercs; knowing when you do get tossed into a cell, you'll still be the biggest badass on the block. Shit, you probably still think you can kick my ass. Remember what you told Jack about me when I was seventeen? You told her I was just a baby, nowhere near my prime. Turns out you were right about that much. I could've broken you with my bare hands back then, so what do you think I could do to you now?" he asked, cocking his head.

Riddick shrugged, preparing to pull out his ace. Things had slid far enough downhill. The last thing he need on top of his kids going missing was a lunatic threatening him in his own house. "Doesn't matter how strong you are," he rumbled, letting himself sound dangerous and at ease. "I don't think I'd need help to take you down."

"You sound pretty sure about that."

"I can smell the booze on you, Conte. It's coming out in your sweat, and I'll bet you didn't sleep at all last night. Jack's right—you have changed. She thinks you're more grounded, because she's never seen your kind before. You've been burning the candle at both ends for longer than you can remember."

That must've hit closer to home than Conte liked, because he didn't answer, just stared. Not surprised, not angry. His face became stone.

Motion from outside ended their short stare-off. Pace and her daughter Ticey stood outside, talking where no one could overhear them. After a moment, Pace pulled Ticey close, rubbing a hand up and down her back in comfort while the young girl sobbed. Both men took in the scene in silence.

"She's not as pretty as Jack turned out," Dom informed him. "She's no teenager anymore, either."

Riddick's gaze didn't stray from pair. Some unfamiliar part of his humanity nudged his mind, whispering that he should go find Jack, hold her, comfort her, make her believe he'd take care of everything. Another part pushed those sentiments away. He'd already started undergoing the process of detaching himself from everything around him. At first he'd assumed it was shock, but now he knew better.

Riddick was preparing himself to go native, letting loose a side of himself the universe hadn't seen in decades.

"Now I know for sure you're still a kid, Conte," he said, keeping his voice low. "A man wouldn't sit and watch while his family suffered like that."

The Con-X merely shook his head. "I can't go out there. She's not as pretty, she's not as innocent, and she's not as thin. Doesn't change the fact that if I got her alone, I'd probably put her back against a wall and show her what she's been missing." With that Dom got up and walked out of the room, heading toward the den.


	14. Chapter 14

It frightened her a little when Robert took her from the house. Tice tried to go find her mother, but he told her not to be silly, they were only going for a short walk. Just down the street.

He wouldn't let her ask if Kyle could go with them.

She went silently, wishing Dallas were there. Her brother never would've allowed her out of his sight with this man near-by. She held no bad feelings against Robert except the ones Dallas instilled in her. Dally told her to stay away from him. Up until then, she'd obeyed to the letter.

"So what's up with that Dom guy, Ticey? Did your mother tell you anything about him?" Robert asked when they were out of earshot of the house.

"No," she said softly, keeping her eyes on the lines of the sidewalk as they passed under her feet.

"Are you sure?" he asked, the undertone of his voice irritated.

She nodded quickly, starting to feel uneasy. She glanced over her shoulder. The house was still in sight.

Robert sighed, his mouth tightening to a thin line as he stared off into the distance. Ticey didn't know why he was mad, but she didn't want to find out, either.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said, trying to sound casual in her lie. She turned, forcing herself to not break into a run toward the house. She could hear his footsteps behind her, coming faster than a walk.

"Ti, wait," he called.

Fear overcame her and she started to sprint as fast as she could, but she could hear him gaining on her. He got a hand on her just a few feet from the front door. To her relief it swung open, revealing the Dark Man, standing tall and intimidating. He easily dwarfed her pursuer, and Robert's grip on her immediately released.

Not thinking, she threw her arms around the Dark Man's waist. Her breathing came in ragged gasps, and her heartbeat sped out of control. She could feel the strength of the man she'd latched onto, even through his clothing. His body hummed with power, but she wasn't afraid of him. Not after she'd seen how he'd held her mother through the night.

He reminded her of Dallas. Big, strong, and ever watchful.

After a moment of hesitation, the Dark Man's hand came to rest on her shoulder, gently holding her to his side.

"Your mother's looking for you," he said to her, breaking the silence, but not the tension hanging in the air. His stare rested on Robert, and never faltered. "Go upstairs and find her, before she starts to worry."

Ticey didn't want to leave him, but he tapped her arm, gently pushing her behind him. Reluctantly, she let go, heading for the stairs. She paused half-way up the stairwell, bending down to watch Robert attempt to pass Dominic.

The Dark Man grabbed him by the front of his shirt with one large paw, halting his progress inside. "Stay away from the kid," he growled.

Robert used both hands to shove off the man's grip. "It's none of your business, but we were just playing a game. What do you care anyway? You're just the hired help. Muscle for money. You got a thing for kids?"

"What I don't like is you going off without telling anyone while I'm trying to do my job. For all I know you're involved with these people. Go for all the walks you want—but if you take that girl out of this house one more time, I'll make sure you never come back."

Robert's eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?"

The Dark Man grinned, but it wasn't a nice grin at all. "Now you're catching on," he said, sounding morbidly amused.

Ticey couldn't help but smile when she saw the blood start to fade out of Robert's face.

* * *

"So, sweetheart. You decide yet if you're gonna leave me for your wife?" Cody asked, yawning big as Kade took a seat beside him.

Vale had spent the entire day running a brute-force decryption program on the message header packets. Eventually he'd find the right hash for decoding and break the encryption making the information illegible. Kade popped in on a regular basis to check up on him—sitting next to him and moping, mostly.

Dom shook his head, rubbing at his eyes with the fingers on one hand. "That might be hard, considering," he said, reaching into his cargo pocket with his free hand and pulling out a mess of folded blue papers. He tossed them onto the desk.

Cody picked them up, unfolding and skimming quickly, immediately realizing the legal jargon went way above his head.

"I don't read good enough to understand what the fuck this says," he said after a minute, flicking the edge of the paper with the back of his fingers to indicate the writing he meant.

Kade took them back, stuffing them back into his pocket. "Divorce papers," he explained shortly.

Cody nodded, raising one shoulder slightly. "So, am I supposed to, like, feel sorry for you or somethin'?"

Dom smiled for the first time in days, reaching over to ruffle Cody's hair. "Na. I don't need a girl. I've got you to suck my dick."

Cody scowled, swatting at his hand. "Man. You say that again, I'm gonna slice your balls off in your sleep."

Kade smirked, rubbing at his neck and cracking it to each side. "Yeah, that's what Pace said too." He kicked back in his chair, setting one boot on top of the other on the edge of the desk. "So, you got anything, or are you persisting in being a worthless piece of shit?"

Cody shot his work partner a nasty look. "You really don't pay me enough to take this much abuse. But yeah, I'm getting close. The last hash I tried at least gave some order to the jumbled mess. I'm just wondering when we should break it to the rest of these people that whoever these guys are, they ain't in this thing for the ransom. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

Kade nodded, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You don't demand money from people who don't have it. You want thirty million, you take a kid from somebody who's got thirty million sitting in a bank. The way they've baited us has me thinking they're either retarded, or way smarter than I want to deal with. Either way, there's something to this we're missing. Just keep looking, and don't talk to anyone but me. Got it?"

Cody flexed his overused fingers, cracking his knuckles before starting back to work. "Yeah, don't worry about that. I'm not the talker out of the two us anymore, remember? You're the one who always says too much."

"Oh, yeah?"

"You know it, bitch," Cody said, pulling up the brute force application and setting up a new file of hashes for it to read from. "So, about this kid, Dallas..." he broached.

Kade shook his head, the embers in his black eyes dulling to ash. "Don't start, Vale," he warned, looking away like he couldn't stand to hear another word on the subject.

Cody held up a finger to stop him. "Just tell me one thing. Do you want to bring him back alive?"

Kade shrugged, thick fingers on one hand lacing into the short bangs of his dark hair. "It's a job. We took the advance, we gotta see it through..."

Cody snorted. Just when had Kade started living in the State of Denial, and why hadn't he noticed sooner?

"Na, man, it isn't just a job. You fathered one of the kids we're going after, and from what I've seen and heard, you're not straight with what you did to him and his mother however many years ago. If you've gotten to the point where you can imagine your son as an affordable loss of life, then we aren't going on this job. You remember what Mako used to say? If there's any doubt in your mind that you want the mission to succeed, then it won't. So, this kid, Dallas... How bad do you want to see him survive this?"

Dom turned his head to look him straight in the eye. "You need assurance my head's in the game? Fine. Here's how this is going to go. Those three kids don't have a reason in the universe to be afraid. Whoever's got them isn't half as frightening as the man out to bring them home. Good enough?"

Cody gave it a minute before shrugging, turning back to the blinking computer screen. He wouldn't admit it, but sometimes when Dom talked tough, it scared the shit out of him. Vale still remembered the day they met, and that moment when those devil-like eyes stared into his while Kade's hand tightened around his throat, squeezing the life out of him without remorse.

A shiver went down his spine just thinking about that, and he quickly tried to shake it off. "I guess we'll find out soon enough," Cody said. "We just broke the encryption. I think we have a location."


	15. Chapter 15

"What the fuck do you mean this is a setup!" Riddick growled, the quiet fierceness in his voice startling even Kyle into silence.

They all sat around the table in the kitchen. It was early in the morning and Conte had just dropped a real bomb on all of them. Dom and his kid sidekick thought the whole ransom deal was a setup.

Cody Vale carefully avoided Riddick's icy stare, but Dom took it head-on.

"You heard what I said," the Con-X said, leaning back in his chair with a lackadaisical ease that sure as hell couldn't be the mark of a man who'd so recently lost a child to kidnappers.

"Yeah, I heard you, Conte. I heard you say you don't think this is about the fucking money..."

"Rick," Jack pleaded, laying a cool hand on his arm.

His eyes slid shut as he tried to check his temper—stop himself from snapping at Jack too. "Take Kyle upstairs," he finally said, his low voice falling to an even deeper, more dangerous pitch.

He expected her to complain, to argue, but she didn't. Things had become so rocky over the past two days, she obeyed immediately, as though afraid to enlarge the growing chasm between them, just when things had started to get a little bit better.

Dallas' sister, Ticey, followed. She'd become attached to Kyle as a playmate, even though a five year gap separated the two children.

"Why don't you come with us, Pace?" Jack offered while ushering Ti and Kyle ahead of her toward the stairs.

Conte's wife looked up at Jack and then shook her head. "No. I'll stay," Pace said, quietly determined to see the meeting through.

Brodell had the seat next to Pace, and he kept close watch over her. He wasn't the only one keeping a careful eye on her, Riddick noted. Conte didn't watch his wife the way Robert Brodell did, but the way his mood fluctuated in her presence betrayed him. Without Pace's influence to mellow him, the Con-X became all kinds of mean and nasty.

He's whipped, Riddick realized. Whenever she's in the room he keeps the attitude on a leash. Shit, that's weird.

Conte's eyes narrowed. "I don't think I have to explain the situation to you again, Riddick. I think you're smart enough to know if these people wanted money, they would've taken kids from people with money. We went over the encryption on that message half a dozen times, and came up with the same answer again and again."

Riddick laced his fingers together and tensed his jaw, biting back the stinging comments he would've liked to let fly. "Say you're right," he said, cocking his head. "Who the fuck would want my kids and yours if not for money?"

"The Task Force," Pace replied easily.

Conte turned an evil-eye on her. "Why don't you go upstairs and let the men talk, huh, sweetheart? While you're at it, take your little boyfriend with you."

"Just tell us what you found out, Dom. Quit being such a drama queen," Pace snapped back.

"I will," Conte snapped, motioning with his thumb toward Brodell. "Just as soon as that asshole gets the fuck out of my sight."

Pace glanced over at Robert. She bit her lip. "Rob, could you please..."

Brodell's calm exterior finally cracked a little, both corners of his mouth turning down in a scowl. "Pace, I don't see why you let him order you around. You hired him to do a job. He has no right to make demands."

"It's a matter of security," Dom cut in, his voice icy. "I work on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know, Sparky. Take a fucking walk."

_That's going to get ugly,_ Riddick thought when Brodell finally made his exit from the room. Robert Brodell had his sights set on Pace and if he'd come this far with the woman, he wouldn't give up easy. Conte would have to deal with that sooner or later.

A heavy silence settled over the four of them--Riddick, Conte, Pace, and Cody Vale.

The Con-X crossed his arms over his chest, setting his jaw stubbornly. "You didn't tell him about us?" he asked Pace.

"I told him all about you," Pace said, cracking her knuckles one by one. "I just didn't tell him I hired you to find Dallas. He thinks my ex-husband is a guy three years older than me in his mid-to-late thirties. Since you spent all that time racing around the galaxy with your buddies you still look like you're in your twenties, Dom. Now quit stalling and tell us what you know."

After a half moment of silence, Conte nodded to Vale

Up until then Cody had kept his peace, trying to inch from the confrontation little by little. With the spotlight back on him, his military training took over and he sat up to debrief them.

"We studied the encryption prints until we found a near match in the Empire's database. The computer the message originated from was military issue, thrown out with the trash officially some five years ago. We located the wireless switch where the message entered the network and set up a mapped range of three square blocks around it. In that area we found five possible target buildings, and only one with more than an eighty percent chance of being the spot where the message was filmed. It's an old warehouse, abandoned after the fall of a mining boom and recently condemned. The location is approximately fifty kilometers from where we're standing."

"So let's go there, scout it out, see if they've got the kids there," Riddick said, knowing his plan would get vetoed.

"Negative," Vale continued. "I ran a risk evaluation this morning and there's a greater than seventy-five percent chance we would all die if we walked into that building. I've done a lot of decryption work over the past couple years, and I'm pretty sure an eight-year-old could've covered their tracks better than these jokers did. They wanted us to find where the message came from."

Dom got to his feet, and Cody followed suit. "Vale and I are going back to our ship to get some sleep, and do an inventory on what we've got for weapons. After dark we'll go over and recon the place."

"I'm coming with you," Pace informed him. "You could run into all kinds of security systems and locks and I can take care of them."

"So am I," Riddick chimed in before Conte could get started on an argument.

To his surprise, Dom only smirked. "Tell them about the other risk analysis you ran this morning, Vale."

All attention turned to Cody as he once again snapped to and prepared to give them a straight rundown.

"Based on the identities of the people in this room. Conte—Con-X, rogue Special Forces tactical weapon. Riddick—former Con-X, escaped convict. Pace Prize—former technology head of the Resistance Force against the Empire. Myself—AWOL Special Forces soldier.

"There is an eighty-two percent probability that the reason those kids were taken was to draw in and entrap someone sitting in this very room. Assuming that fact to be true, there is a ninety-five percent chance that if any part of the opposition's plan goes south, they will strike hard and fast at whoever's left to strike at, even if they're women and children."

Riddick felt the beginnings of a migraine sprouting just behind his eyes.

"Are you telling me that if you guys fuck this up, these people are going to kill Jack and Kyle?" he asked, amazed at how calm he sounded in spite of the rage boiling just beneath the surface of his skin.

Conte's smirk became a little smugger. "That's the gist of it. So, did you guys still want to come along and leave your loved ones unprotected, or do you want to let me and Vale do our job?"

Pace glared daggers at her husband, and Riddick couldn't help sympathising with her. He too wanted to see Dom get knocked over the head with a blunt object.

Didn't change the fact that the obnoxious SOB was right. They would have to take measures to protect the people they had left during their efforts to recover the ones stolen from them.


	16. Chapter 16

_He was young and blind, running after the noise of a crowd ahead of him in a long hallway, one hand on the wall to guide him. Dallas just wanted to catch up. If he could just find the person he searched for, everything would be all right._

_Suddenly his orientation changed, and he felt his feet leave the ground. He'd been swooped up, but not by someone he knew. All the adults who handled him were gentle about picking him up. They didn't treat him like a rag doll._

_"Look what we've got here," the man who held him said._

_Dallas struggled, whimpering. He didn't like this person. They were too rough, and they smelled bad._

_He ceased any movement at all when a sharp slap hit him across the face._

_"Serves you right, you little bastard," another man growled._

_Dally started to cry when the man holding him dropped him, letting him crash to the floor unexpectedly. The men standing around him yelled things he couldn't understand, but Dallas couldn't tell if they were meant for him or not. He was too scared to care. He just sobbed and wished for someone familiar to come and pick him up._

_"You said you'd leave my son out of this, Marshal!"_

_There. He knew that voice. It belonged to someone safe._

_Dallas started to crawl toward where he'd heard the familiar male voice, scared to death someone would try to stop him._

_"I'm no part of this, Dom. I'm just here for damage control after it's over."_

_"Then give him back to me. Let me put him in his crib, then you can do whatever the fuck you want with me. I won't give you any trouble."_

_The next thing he knew, he'd once again been lifted from the floor. This time with care. Strong arms wrapped around him, and he hugged his father around the neck, hiding his face against a broad shoulder._

_"Kill him, now," a man ordered from several feet away. Not the one named Marshal, a different one._

_"No! Stand down! Stand down! They wanted him alive!"_

_Dallas tightened his grip on his father's clothing, gasping when they turned sharply away from the voices. Gunfire exploded behind them._

_Everything stopped. Time ceased going forward, and for less than a second, Dallas saw everything around him. The sneers on the faces of the mercenaries, the identical patches they wore, the bullets in the air. His father had turned his back to the gunfire. He held Dallas tight against his chest, as if to shield him. Not that it would've mattered. Instinctively, Dally knew they would both die unless he did something._

_So he did._

_It was beautiful. A full spectrum of color exploded across his vision before the world again sank into blackness. When his perspective returned to normal, he heard the metal hit the floor and bounce, literally falling from the air._

* * *

Dallas woke up, dazed and confused, wondering where he was. Then he saw them, a boy and a girl, sleeping on the floor just a few feet away.

Cam and Rachel Riddick. He could actually see them.

When he'd touched Rachel's face, his fingertips told him she was pretty. They hadn't lied. She was beautiful.

He got to his feet. Although his eyes remained stationary, stony, he gazed around.

They were in a holding cell--eight feet by eight feet. The floor was ferocrete with a drain in the middle so the cell could easily be hosed down. The walls were made from ferocrete blocks and grout, and the ceiling appeared to have the same composition as the floor. The cell entrance was made from a not-quite-see-through polymer Dallas didn't recognize, but he guessed would be nearly impossible to drill through. The hinges were on the outside--as were all access to wiring. The ring of Dallas' vision extended about a foot into the hallway, allowing him to view the locking mechanism on their cell. The lock had a key pad, a card slot, and enough anti-theft features to give even his mother a run for her money.

Ferocrete didn't get put in ships, so he determined they were probably still planet-side. The cell construction was too state-of-the art for a jail, and too expensive to be a one-time-use construction. Dallas attempted to stretch his vision a little farther, see if anyone stood out in the hall. If there were cameras watching the door. As far as he could tell, their cell was the only one on the block--unless the ferocrete walls were over five feet thick, and that seemed impossibly excessive. Three inches of ferocrete equalled three feet of solid steel. He gave up, allowing his vision to snap back to its normal range.

Dallas often tried to imagine experiencing sight from a limited perspective, but he couldn't. He saw all 360 degrees around him all the time. He also couldn't imagine shutting his eyes and snapping off his vision. Dallas's abilities allowed him metaphorical eyes in the back of his head, even while he slept, even if there was no light present in the room. He could see everything around him in tones of white, gray, and black—and every surface appeared to flow in some direction, like a constant stream of particles, although his fingers told him that was an illusion. Hard surfaces didn't actually flow—at least not on a level perceivable by touch.

In spite of the advantages of his abilities, he lived in a colorless world of desolate shadow.

Still, it sure beat the hell out of walking around blind.


	17. Chapter 17

AN: I need to update this story pretty bad. I've done a huge amount of editing of the chapters on other sites, and I plan to get them updated here by the end of the week. Thanks so much to anyone who's still reading this. I do plan to get this thing finished this fall :-)

* * *

After Jack removed the kids from the war council in her living room, she spent some time in Cam's room. She busied her hands with making her son's bed and let her mind wander. She'd dedicated her life to understanding criminals, and up until then she'd thought she'd done a good job. She'd even prided herself on putting personal attachments aside and evaluating Riddick.

Jack had thought she knew him, but she'd gotten lost somewhere along the way and Riddick didn't seem interested in putting up road road signs to help her out. Ever since his initial outburst over her visit to Dom's ship, her husband had clammed up. The words they did share were civil, but painfully few. Maybe he didn't feel the same way she did. Emptied out, and tortured. So much like she felt after T2. Even at thirteen, she'd kept up a good tough-girl act. Then, like now, Riddick didn't seem to notice how badly she wanted him to take her into his arms and let her go boneless against him, crying out all her sorrow.

Maybe he never did change, and the kids going missing...

No. She didn't doubt he loved their kids. The part she wondered about, now, was if that's what had held them together all these years.

Once made, Cameron's bed seemed so alien. The eighteen-year-old no longer allowed his mother in his room uninvited, and his placating attempts to make his own bed were always haphazard at best.

After several long moments of staring down at it, she threw back the covers and gathered them up into a ball, dropping them back onto the bed in whatever shape they chose to land in. Who cared? Cam might never come home. Who gave a flying fuck if his bed was messy or not?

After Jack heard Dominic and his little helper take off to do inventory on their ship, she found herself wandering toward Kyle's room, finding the kids playing together on the floor. She thought she'd find Pace with them, but the young woman apparently hadn't come upstairs yet. Like Jack, she rarely let her only remaining child out of sight for long. Jack still felt obligated to tell Pace about Dom, and what went on between them so many years ago.

Leaning against the doorframe, Jack took a moment to soak up the kids' small smiles and the joy they found in each other's company. They seemed so resilient, so strong. Jack didn't know if she should be disturbed by Kyle's lack of reaction to the situation. He seemed to know what it meant to be kidnapped, yet he didn't cry or bemoan the loss of his siblings. His single-minded devotion to Cameron had defined him from an early age, and although he didn't get along with Rachel, he'd still cuddle with her when given the opportunity.

Jack just didn't know what to think of it. Shock? Early signs of mental illness?

The kids played with different colors of putty. The real stuff, not a children's modeling program on an interactive tablet. Ticey made a line of people, some taller and some shorter. Kyle made his usual monsters, but he seemed subdued compared to his usual energy. He wore a pair of Cam's ratty old cargo pants, cut down, tucked, and hemmed ten different ways to fit him. He only wore black t-shirts—again in imitation of his older brother—and the one he currently wore advertised a local college athletic team.

He'd worn those clothes for two days and they weren't even dirty. Maybe he was taking it harder than she knew.

"What'chya making, Ti?" Kyle asked after a while.

"My family," Ticey said. She had her putty-people laid out on their backs. "These two are my aunt Lasia and uncle Rhys," she told Kyle, pointing out two figures on her right. "That's my mom, and that's me."

"Who's that?" Kyle asked, pointing to the figure clutched forgotten in her hand.

Ticey looked down at the boy in her open palm. From the doorway, Jack could see Ti had made him with blond hair and black dots for eyes. After a long moment of staring at the figure of Dallas, a silent tear fell from one of Ticey's eyes and rolled down her small cheek.

Kyle reached out with putty-stained fingers to squeeze her other hand.

"It's okay, Ti. Dallas and Camy and Rachel are going to be okay."

Tice shook her head so slowly, so morosely, Jack felt her own eyes start to burn and tear up. The little girl pulled in a shuttering breath, and it nearly broke Jack's heart to hear it.

"I never got to say good-bye," Ticey said, her voice cracking at the end. She pulled her hand from Kyle's grip, and used the back of it to wipe at her face. "I told him to stop stealing cars! I told him if he loved me, he'd stop!"

Kyle dropped his putty monster and wrapped his arms around the older girl, letting his cheek rest against her shoulder while she sobbed.

"It's okay, Ticey. My daddy's going to bring them home. You'll see."

Suddenly it all became so clear—why Kyle didn't fear for Cam and Rachel. All the breath abruptly left Jack's lungs, like she'd gotten kicked in the chest. She'd once had the same blind faith in Riddick, and now even a five year old could see what she'd lost sight of. Yes, Rick was a man with flaws. He wasn't the same man who saved her on T2, but hell if he wouldn't become that man again to protect her, to protect their family. When Riddick was poisoned, given Seka in dangerous doses to control his behavior, she'd fought so hard to get him back. Even then she'd had more faith in him than she did now.

That's what he was doing. That's why he'd stopped speaking to her. He was preparing himself to go after the kids.

Jack turned away from her son's room, hardly able to breathe. Pace stood just behind her, and Jack gasped in surprise at finding her there, her hand rising to cover her mouth.

Dom's wife stood at eye-level. She was tall, but more thickly built than Jack. Her long honey-blonde hair was swept back in a messy pony-tail. Her cheeks were red, blotchy, and tear streaked.

"I never slept with Dom," Jack said, the words skipping out of her mouth without consulting her first.

Pace nodded. "I know," she said.

The answer seemed appropriate at such a somber moment, but not entirely plausible. If it had been her, and she'd met a woman Riddick knew before her...

"How? How could you possibly know?"

Pace moved the collar of her shirt so Jack could see the shoulder beneath. Two bright stars marred the pale skin just above her collar bone. "He marks what belongs to him. His kills, and women—at least, the ones he cares for," Pace said, her voice brittle. A tiny smile tried to turn up the corners of her mouth. "It seems to be instinct-driven. He bit his sister when he was seven, right after his retractable eye-teeth came in. I noticed you don't have one," Pace said, motioning to Jack's shoulders.

Sure enough, when she looked down, she found thin tank-top straps and no star-shaped scars.

"But, I met a woman he slept with and he didn't bite her," Jack said, kicking herself before the sentence finished leaving her mouth. She needed to get a handle on herself.

Pace pressed her lips together tighter and took a slow breath through her nose, perhaps to maintain control of her voice. "Before meeting you, I thought I would've been the only one." She sounded supremely confident in her words, and her expression conveyed an even deeper meaning. Fear? Pain?

A tear leaked from the corner of Pace's eye, and she wiped it away. "We fall in love with these men, Jack. Your husband—he's a predator, like Dom," she choked, biting her lower lip. It took her a solid moment to compose herself enough to speak again. "When you chose your Riddick over Dominic, you made the right decision." She attempted a smile, and failed, her lips twisting instead of turning up.

* * *

Something kept nagging at the back of his mind. Some piece of the puzzle that was missing.

Riddick stood in the kitchen, making a sandwich. His stomach had become too much of a civilian. It tried hard to twist up and prevent him from eating, but he wouldn't let it. Prison doled out hard lessons when his clarity slipped for even a moment—whether the cause be hunger, physical illness, or lack of sleep. There were plenty of big fish in the pen, but most of them rotted inside because they didn't have a brain like his.

Over the course of the past twenty-four hours he'd done a lot of thinking, and he wondered if part of him wanted Jack to be right. He had no idea if he could fix this mess in time to save their kids, and if they left it up to Conte, it would be Dom's failure—not his.

That part of him was the remains of the Riddick that died on T2. Don't put yourself out there for anyone. Let someone else take the fall.

But he wouldn't do it. Fail or succeed, he wouldn't let Conte ride into this without him. Rick mentally walked through the series of events that had led up to the present moment, including everything that happened the last time he'd run into Conte. If nothing else, he believed in things making sense. Some sort of logic stood behind every action and reaction that occurred in life—even if that logic involved insanity.  
In the beginning, he'd lived with Jack and Imam on New Mecca. He got seduced by a woman named Shella with a little help from a drug Shella had procured from her brother, Michael. Michael may have had ties to the Task Force—a team created by the Empire to kill or capture non-human specimens.

Jack came to live with him three years later, and over a number of months while she was there, she met Conte, got involved with him, and somehow the two of them found a way to get Riddick off the drug Shella had been feeding him.

There was the first gap. Why the fuck would Dominic Conte help someone he expected to use as bait for an assassination? To gain Jack's trust? To convince her to come with him after he completed the mission?  
Possibly.

It was a definite gap, but for the moment, one he had no choice but to pass over. To say the least, Conte had been unstable at that time, and hadn't operated on sane reasoning. He might not even know why he'd helped Jack.

Just when Rick started to recover from his drug stupor, Conte used Riddick and Jack to lure his target, Shella's brother, out into the open.

The second gap. Why the fuck had Shella's brother been after him in the first place? What had he wanted from Richard B. Riddick that didn't involve killing him?

This inconsistency he'd pondered for years. At best, Rick was a close subspecies human, just far enough from classical genes to warrant an extended lifespan and limited aging—and a slightly faster than average mind and body.

Fucking Conte had fangs, and some weird fucking eyes.

All right. So beyond the mystery of why he'd been sought by the Task Force, what else was missing? He'd met Dallas by chance at a race while the kid was on the run. Agents were after the boy—tracking him since an accident on his home planet where the officials reported him as a non-human.

Third gap. If the Task Force was supposedly disbanded, and working without the Empire's official consent, why kidnap Cam and Rachel? If the underground team was already working without official license, why risk being wiped out all together by taking children belonging to citizens of New Mecca? If he and Jack pleaded with their city representative, their case could potentially climb all the way to the top of New Mecca's government. If the Empire thought for one second they might lose their ability to bargain with an independent New Mecca for raw goods, whatever remained of the Task Force would immediately be erased from the living.

How could they have known he and Jack wouldn't go to the authorities? Were they too stupid to care, or did they know who he used to be? Was the Task Force still pursuing him? Could it possibly be anyone else?

Too many 'what-ifs' about the whole thing. He needed more information.

Riddick cut the sandwich into two triangles and then four with a butter knife—a habit left over from Cameron's childhood.

The information he needed might be in Conte's head, but Riddick didn't feel like going there. It never proved expedient to pick at a crazy man's brain. The kid—Cody Vale—probably knew something useful, but Rick would have a hard time stepping around Conte to interrogate him.

That left the wife. Pace Prize—former Resistance Force head of technology. He could only imagine what that implied. Did she do virtual theft for the Resistance, or just fix their systems when they broke down? Regardless of whether or not she knew anything useful, she'd be the easiest to approach. Conte had fucked up badly enough to ensure that.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, Riddick took a bite of sandwich and decided he'd put too much mustard on it. While chewing, he debated how he'd pose his questions, and what he'd do with the answers when he obtained them.


	18. Chapter 18

Pace bit the right side of her lower lip, kneeling on the guest bed in front of her open suitcase. On top of the bag's mess of wadded clothing--both hers and Ticey's--sat a small box, no bigger than her open hand from fingertip to heel. Such a small box. So many possibilities.

_You could end this entire thing in five minutes._

Maybe she could. Wouldn't it be worth it, to save Dallas--even if it cost her...

No. She couldn't trust her own judgment in this. Too many times that box had called to her, begging her to open it. Maybe it would solve everything--maybe her inner addict just wanted her to believe it would.

Besides, if Dom saw her with it, he'd freak. He thought they didn't exist anymore. That was the only reason he hadn't searched her belongings and taken it away. He hated it--even more intensely than he hated when other men hit on her. He'd once pulled a gun on a teenage boy vying for her attention, but that rage couldn't measure up to the fury the tiny device in that box inspired in him. Sure Dom said he didn't care anymore, but Pace doubted his laissez faire extended to this.

Even more than that, Pace feared any slip in her mental facilities. Whether she liked it or not, Dom was the only hope for her son. What if Conte lost focus? What if he lost control here, now, and she didn't catch it? It didn't take much to push her husband into madness.

Yes, but couldn't Jack handle him? Just this once, couldn't she let down her guard--let Dom become someone else's burden?

Pace hugged herself with both arms, squeezing tight. Trying so hard to keep her hands in check. Her eyes fell closed. She couldn't make this decision herself. Some who knew her and her past needed to give her permission. Dom--or his sister, Lasia. Dom played loose and selfish. He didn't care about saving anyone who didn't belong to him. Lasia understood the good of the many came first.

"Mom! We're leaving," Tice called from the bottom of the steps. The others were ready to go. They'd booked passes on several moon-shuttles for the Riddicks, Pace and Ticey. While Dom and Cody investigated the warehouse where the kidnappers might be keeping their missing children, the rest of them would hide on public transport.

How she loathed staying behind. In the Resistance, no mission began without her presence in some form. Two seconds. Two seconds, and the blindness and deafness would evaporate. The whole world would be at her mercy.

Her breath quickened and her heart raced as she reached out toward the suitcase. Then, with shaking hands, she pulled the bag closed and fastened it.

Some of the faux euphoria faded immediately, but her pulse still pounded in her ears.

* * *

The sun had long since faded against the skyline of New Mecca's capital city. Armed with overnight bags, the five of them--three adults and two children--packed their things in Jack's car.

Subdued, Kyle and Ticey sat next to each other in the back seat. Jack worked on getting Kyle fastened into his booster seat.

"Momma, did you bring my games?" the boy asked. He had a hand-held video game device that was pre-programmed with learning games. Cam had long ago overwritten it with age inappropriate games from his own collection. Neither of the boys suspected their parents were aware of this.

"It's in your backpack," Jack reassured the boy.

"Can I have it?"

"What do you say?"

"May I please have it, Mom?"

Jack finished tightening the seat belt on the booster seat, and pulled her head out of the car. That's when she saw Dom and his partner pull up to the driveway in a truck. Dom sat behind the wheel, waiting.

Time to face the music.

"What the fuck do they want," Riddick breathed to her, moving past her with their bags.

Jack's small hand found his thick forearm, stopping him with a gentle squeeze. Her eyes fell shut, but remained dry. When she opened them, she forced herself to look up at him. His brown eyes held a question, and he waited patiently for her answer.

Oh how she'd loved his silver eyes. She used to study them with her peripheral vision when she thought he wouldn't notice. They were liquid metal and perfect. So perfect. She'd married a pair of deep brown eyes, and even though she saw flashes of silver in her imagination, those brown eyes belonged to a different man. She'd known that all along, and selfishly kept it to herself. She never told Rick he used to be different. He vaguely remembered, but in the Seka haze he'd lost himself. The remains of the drug always turned his mind away when it tried to return to normal. It conditioned him to be civilized.

"I asked them to come. I want you to go with them," she said softly, but with undeniable iron in her voice. "Go with them and save my children, Riddick."

She spoke to a man who hadn't truly lived in decades. Rick's face twisted minutely, his forearm almost pulled from her grasp, but she held on tight. Now she knew for sure he could hear her.

"Go and save them. If anyone gets in the way..." How long had their eyes been locked? A second? A year? His pupils jumped to the side, always returned to her. "I want you to kill them. Kill them all."

Another twist in his features, the only sign of the massive inner battle taking place. Jack had some memory of what it felt like to buck the Seka programming. She'd experienced the effects of the drug for a few weeks. Riddick had endured it for years--and even after he was free, he never completely regained himself.

Today, that would change. There were two parts to Seka mind washing--the drug, and the voice of influence. Jack didn't know how exactly the mind washing part worked, other than it required direct statements indicating desired behavior. Shella had ordered him to become Rick Costello all those years ago, and now Jack would order him to be Richard B. Riddick. Would it work without the drug working to mold his thinking?

"If you find the people who did this, I want their blood and guts on the floor. I need the Riddick I met on T2. I need him to go with those men, and be worse than the monsters in the darkness."

Riddick blinked hard, and Jack almost expected silver to replace the brown when he opened them again. Even though the color remained the same, a hardness she'd nearly forgotten came into his eyes.

Jack took the bags from Riddick's hands, and he turned around, taking nothing with him. It was really something to watch him take a hesitant step, and then suddenly break into the half-cocked swagger she remembered from T2. She's forgotten how intimidating he could be in everything he did, even walking away. That broad back invited more fear than opportunity to stick in a knife.

_"Come on, we're missin' the party,"_ he'd said to her, when she was a fourteen year old girl who'd shaved her head imitating him. Then he'd walked off just like that, sure as death and with a chip on his shoulder. Back then it was Johns who needed killing. Now, the enemy had no face--but that wouldn't save them.

Through their entire relationship, she'd always feared watching his broad back disappear into the distance. Feared she'd never see him again. Bags forgotten in her hands, Jack watched Riddick jump into the back seat of the truck, directly behind Dom, and the three men drove off without sharing a word.

When she lost sight of the truck, Jack turned around and Pace caught her eye over the top of the car. The younger woman gave a slight nod of approval. Yes, Jack had done the right thing. It didn't stop her from gazing at her beautiful house front and wishing their fairy-tale life would return.

One way or another, after today, there would be no fairy-tale ending for Jack B. Badd. She felt that in the pit of her soul.

Carefully placing the bags in the trunk, Jack forced down the lump in her throat. There was nothing she could do to protect her husband and her older two children, but she still had Kyle. Nothing would happen to that boy.

_Jack B. Badd sat on a wall...  
Jack B. Badd had a great fall..._

Nothing.


	19. Chapter 19

Once they were underway, Cody shot Dom a quick look and the kid's question was unmistakable. Were they really letting this guy come along on a mission? They'd hadn't worked with a third since Mako, and he'd trained them. Cody typically acted as the tech—surveillance, guidance, maybe some sniping if necessary. Dom typically brought the muscle to the table. What they lacked in numbers they made up for in cohesion. Where would Riddick fit in the balance?

When Jack called to ask them to take Riddick along, Dom flat out refused. He didn't want to play babysitter. Then again, some deeper part of him knew what it felt like to get lost. When the military modded his memory—essentially creating a blank slate where his brain used to be—it took so much from him. Ten years later he still had a billion fragments of memory floating around in his head, looking for a place to fit.

Riddick used to be something really dangerous. When it came to kicking ass, Dom always brought the rain—but this might be too heavy for a two man team. They might need three scary motherfuckers hunting these assholes in the dark if they wanted to ever see the kids alive again.

Later, Cody would ask him why he allowed Riddick to join them. Dom would have to tell him the truth. The number one reason why he brought Riddick was to keep eyes on him. Better to let that animal rediscover itself in some remote warehouse than later on down the road, when it might ruin everything.

"So whatever happened to your shine job?" Dom asked, glancing at a stoic Riddick in the rearview mirror.

"Holy shit, he had a shine job?" Cody said, turning around in the passenger seat to look at Riddick—as if noticing him for the first time. "You had a shine job? How? Those things cost..."

"More than your life's worth," Riddick filled in for him nonchalantly.

Cody shook his head. "No, it's actually about the same. I'm worth half a million dead, three quarters alive; same range as a decent shine job."

Dom couldn't help but roll his eyes. Leave it to Vale to nail down the literal. "We aren't in the boonies here, Vale. On New Mecca cosmetic surgeries are performed by doctors who work as doctors. It's a free market system with enforced anti-trust laws. The prices are a fraction of what we see in the outlands."

"And they're a hell of a lot cleaner," Riddick chipped in, seeming to speak from experience.

Cody gaffed. "What, you actually worry about clean? Ah, come on. Where's the adventure without a few cockroaches scurrying around while you're laid out on a metal table with some butcher sorting the metal bits out of your intestines?" he asked, his enthusiasm causing both Dom and Riddick to grimace at the thought. Neither of them needed a reminder of undergoing such procedures without any anesthetic, surrounded by squalor.

"If it wasn't cockroaches, it was rats," Dom added, a look of disgust on his face.

"Black mold on the walls—mold everywhere," Riddick said.

Cody, "Scalpels that were rusty, or just covered in dried blood."

"Wet blood on the floor. Liters of it," Riddick said.

Dom, "Doctor's hands shaking because he's itching for his fix."

Riddick, "Wondering if he'll sell your organs to fund his next fix."

Cody, "Wondering if he'll call some low-life merc to come pick you up if you die on the table."

Riddick, "Wondering if you'll die on the table so he can collect the bounty himself."

"Uh, uh, not me," Dom said. "I never had to worry about that. Paid in advance, went no-anesthetic, and held a gun to the fucker's head while he worked. Wouldn't lay down on the table unless son-of-a-bitch agreed to it."

"Did that work well for you?" Vale asked, sardonic. "You never worried he'd get too busy worrying about the gun in his face and, you know?" He made a slicing motion with one hand. "Slip?"

"He woulda been dead before he hit the fuckin' floor."

"So that's three deceased doctors I have to thank," Riddick said. "One for each ball sliced off, and one unfortunate soul who halved Conte's already insubstantial dick."

"Maybe you should ask your wife about my insubstantial dick sometime, Riddick."

"Can't get a word in—what with her and your wife giggling about it all the time."

"They're giggling because you actually believe you're the one who popped Jack's cherry."

"Could've had it long before I did," Riddick said, no regret or defensiveness--just a plain fact.

A moment of silence passed.

"So whatever happened to the shine job, anyway?" Dom pressed, like the tangent of the past few minutes hadn't occurred. "Corrective contacts? Reversal procedure?"

"Didn't think I needed it anymore," Riddick said, his jaw tight—there was finality there, and a hint of anger, or maybe regret.

"We could've used it," Vale said, carrying on a conversation trying hard to end itself. "We'll hit the warehouse late tonight. I went and scoped it earlier today. Set up some equipment to record conversations inside the building and monitor transmissions. Thought maybe we'd get something from that, even if it's a bust."

Riddick made a low growling noise at the back of his throat that sounded threatening. He didn't seem to have much faith in their ability to get the job done.

Dom smirked. Eventually Riddick would figure out that he always had a contingency plan—but for now, he'd let Rick stew in his juices, and maybe find that nasty part of himself that the Seka locked away so long ago.  


* * *

  
It seemed like they scoped the warehouse for hours. Conte sent Vale off on his own, keeping Riddick close at hand. Slowly they moved around the site, keeping to the shadows and protection of other buildings. There were no guards, no lights, nothing.

As far as Riddick could see, they were at the wrong fucking place.

He could see Cody approaching their location, but he found it eerie that he couldn't hear any footsteps. The kid loped across the gaps between protective cover, keeping his head low and meeting them at the side of a small hardware shop.

"It's all quiet on the side I checked," he said.

Conte nodded in agreement. "You see any windows?"

Vale shook his head.

"Points of entry?"

"Just the usual. Key-card locks on the doors. Ventilation shafts ten feet off the ground. Nothing serious enough to scare off a common thief. Makes me wonder what's in there that isn't worth security."

"A trap, maybe?" Riddick reminded, feeling morbid enough for blatant sarcasm.

Conte used his head to motion toward the building. He led the way—the kid falling in right behind him. Riddick waited, his back to the wall. He'd go when he was damn well ready, and not a second sooner.

Three seconds later, he turned the corner and trailed after the boys ahead of him.

They made their way cautiously to the building's blind side; a wall with no entrance, and some building cover. Upon reaching the actual building, right under an air vent, Conte crouched down, cupping his hands to give Vale a foothold. He easily boosted the kid high enough to tear off the grate, and hand it silently down to Riddick. Cody pulled himself up and inside, disappearing into the tight-fitting depths.

With Vale safely out of sight, Rick took a knee next to Conte against the wall.

"Handy little guy, ain't he?" Dom commented under his breath.

Rick glanced up; amazed he couldn't hear the boy banging around in the metal ventilation system. "What's he doing?"

Dom shrugged. "A little recon. A little sniping. Nothing too stressful. He had an accident a while back, so I mostly keep him in reserve."

Riddick slowly turned a hard glare in Conte's direction. "What kind of accident?" he asked, sounding dangerous.

"The kind that's none of your damn business," Dominic shot back, dropping out the clip out of his handgun, checking it before popping it back in. He repeated the process with his other gun before rising from his knee to a crouch and starting to move.

Riddick's hand on his shoulder restrained him.

The Con-X's face appeared as smooth planes in the darkness—planes that betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Riddick felt his back teeth grinding together in agitation while he glared at the younger man.

He didn't have to say it; Conte could read between the lines. "You know the rules, Dick. You don't ask guys like us about our mistakes. If you forgot that one, you're way too civilized to be out here with us. You weren't that different from me once; try to remember that, before you get anyone else kidnapped, or killed."

What a line of bullshit. Riddick let him go, but on the inside he seethed.

Conte paused, glancing back at him. "By the way—if you ask him what happened, I'll kill you. He doesn't remember, and if I have anything to say about it, he never will."

A piece of the puzzle fell into place. "You modded his memory," Riddick stated, his eyes narrowing.

Dom shrugged. "It was the only way. If you lost everything enough times, it would crush you too." The Con-X again started to move away before pausing, looking back at Riddick over his shoulder. "Why the fuck aren't you packing?" he asked.

A knife slipped into Riddick's hand, and he demonstrated flipping it over and under so fluidly, it looked like an extension of his arm.

Conte rolled his eyes, pulling a handgun from a holster and offering it to him. "Here. I hope you know how to use that. If you lose it, I'll kill you."

At first Riddick didn't take the weapon. "I don't work that way," he stated coldly. This was a blatant lie. He'd used a firearm to kill many times—but taking help from Conte? That cut too close for comfort.

Dom slapped the gun into his hand. "Yeah, well, get over the fear, old man. Come on, let's go."

Riddick paused a second, looking down at the gun in his hand.

Over twenty years ago, Dominic Conte used him as bait. According to Jack, Dom followed him around, knew him inside out. An assassin would've known his kill record from his prison escapes. An Assassin Guild member like Dom should've known exactly what Rick was capable of—including weapon preference, or lack thereof.

"He shoulda known it was a lie," Riddick thought out loud, his deep voice gravely and dark. Storing that discovery away for later, Riddick moved to follow Dom.

* * *

Conte used a virus card to hack the locking mechanism on one of the entrances, and they slipped inside—guided by Vale's recon of the place from above. The kid whispered the locations of waiting guards in their ears. Conte took point—doing the quiet killing of the men they stalked in silence.

The logical side of Riddick's brain told him this was the way it had to be. He'd fallen too far out of practice to know for sure he could end a man's life silently. Dominic's skills were like the edge of a good razor—deadly, and well maintained. Rick stood back in the shadows and watched a master at work, glad to know he still desired a piece of the action when it came down to it. He wanted to kill each and every one of these bastards for taking part in kidnapping Cam and Rachel—but at the back of his mind self-doubt pestered him, no matter how he tried to force it out. Maybe he didn't have it anymore.

Not that he let the experience go to waste. It wasn't every day he observed a killer trained by both the Assassin's Guild, and the Empire's Special Forces. Whatever the military did to Dom, it suited him. Riddick breathed a little easier knowing Conte no longer took sick pleasure in his work. It was all business for the Con-X. Cold, quick, and efficient.

Riddick slipped off Conte's six when the path split off between larger crates. Dom didn't even pause—just walked on along his chosen path.

"There's one ahead of you. He's twenty feet away from crossing your path from right to left, two crates down." Cody's voice came to Riddick through the bug in his ear, a condition Conte had insisted upon.

Riddick lightened his steps, sliding along the crate on his right at a silent lope. He paused at the corner, his back pressed against the metal surface, knife in hand. Above on a cat-walk, he spotted another guard walking along.

"Your position's good. He's walking his route straight. Automatic weapon, safety on, finger well off the trigger. You've got two inches on him, and at least thirty pounds. Recommend letting him walk out and taking him from behind. He won't see it coming. Five steps. Three. Two. Don't think, just do it."

Good advice, Riddick thought, his eyes flicking up when the man wandered past him. The guy didn't even look around.

Riddick didn't think about it. He stepped forward and reached around, clamping one large hand over the man's nose and mouth, slipping the blade into his back.


	20. Chapter 20

Warm blood flowed over the knife handle and his fingers. His heart pounded in his ears from exhilaration. The body seized in his arms, and he squeezed tighter to keep the man's death from reaching the ears of his compatriots, letting the blade slip out of the wound to speed the process. Riddick didn't let go until the man's eyes glazed, and his heart slowed, then stopped. He lowered the body to the ground, silently letting him come to rest on the cold floor.

"Smooth," Vale commented when Riddick rose to tower over the corpse he'd just created. "You've got a gift for this line of a work. Ever consider doing it professionally?"

Riddick growled an acknowledgement. It'd been a long time since someone had revered his talent instead of condemning it. Hot blood coursed through his veins, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so alive.

"So what's the verdict? Wanna bag one more, then call it a night?"

"There's one up on the catwalk," Riddick rumbled under his breath.

"Not anymore," Cody replied. "Sniped his ass while you were busy. Medium caliber with a silencer. Quiet, very quiet."

Riddick smirked, honestly amused. "Eyes in the back of my head. Coulda used you while I was in prison, kid."

Vale scoffed. "I killed people who tried to use me in prison. Had to kill a few who tried to help me, too. Didn't you?"

"In that lifetime," Riddick agreed solemnly, keeping his voice low.

* * *

"How's he doing?" Dom asked, the patch on his throat allowing him to intone the words instead of actually speaking out loud. He was lying on top of a storage boxcar, listening for his next victim to pass by.

"Kade, this guy is holy shit good. You tangled with him on top of his game?" Vale asked. He sounded like that would've impressed him.

"At the time he had a girl feeding him Seka. He wasn't full speed."

Beneath him, a nervous figure passed by, looking from left to right, but never up. Dom scooted to the edge of the cargo container, watching him pass before dropping silently behind him.

"Ah shit," Cody said, the same way anyone else would say 'what a shame.' "Did he ever go through a detox process?"

"I don't think he's even consciously aware of what happened to him," Conte intoned, ghosting up behind his victim, completely silent in spite of his ongoing conversation.

"So all these years..."

Dom wrapped one large hand over the man's mouth, popping a six inch blade through the side of his neck and upward, hitting the jugular and the voice box in one deadly stroke, then jerking the blade forward and tearing out his throat. Blood and gore slopped down the man's front.

"Mostly brainwashed. I think Jack tried to set him back to the guy he used to be, but her version was tainted—she probably didn't know he was still so open to suggestion."

"That explains a lot. No way a guy with those skills ends up in a life like that," Vale scoffed.

_No,_ Dom thought, dragging the mess he'd just created into a shadowed crevice between crates. Pace's disappointed face flashed across his mind's eye. _We definitely do not._

* * *

Vale led Riddick to another kill, then to a spot where Conte waited for him. The two of them continued on, but after getting a taste of going off on his own, Riddick balked at the thought of following someone else.

However, it did seem worth it to keep the Con-X walking in front of him, as opposed to somewhere out of sight.

The end came so suddenly, it almost caught Rick off guard. They found Vale sitting on a box. The kid watched a uniformed man trying to crawl on his belly through a pool of his own blood. A knife in the man's side seriously cramped his style.

"He gonna die on me?" Conte asked, walking over to sit down next to his recon man.

Vale shook his head; his feet swung several inches above the ground—very much like a child instead of a killing machine. "Na, he won't die until you want him to. He's the CO of this ragtag, second-rate crew. Tried to bail when I shot his buddy over there," Cody said, motioning to a body off in the shadows. "I think he's just dying to tell everything he knows."

"Any communications get out?" Dom asked, pulling a piece of gum from his jacket and unwrapping it.

Vale gave him a look of mock offense. "Pfft, no. Who the hell you think you're working with here? I got them all—and I got them on tape, along with some other good stuff."

Conte made a show of rubbing the kid's buzzed hair, then casually turned his attention back to a pissed-off Riddick, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, still scanning their surroundings for signs of an ambush, never taking his eye off the injured man for too long.

"What're you waiting for?" Dom asked, cocky as hell.

Riddick just restrained himself from growling his defiance. How the fuck had he ended up taking orders from this power-tripping asshole?

Conte nodded to Vale, who hopped off his seat, and once again disappeared into the shadows.

"He'll keep watch so you can work without distraction. I heard you used to be good at getting people to tell you things. Go ahead—see if you've still got it," Dom challenged, cocking his head toward the groaning merc, gum snapping between his teeth.

So much for the logical side of Rick's brain. His emotions at that moment basically boiled down to wanting to strangle the life out of Conte, and wanting to jump right into torturing one of the men responsible for the fate of his children. Riddick chose the latter option, because deep down, he needed more proof he still had it.

A knife slipped into Riddick's fingers without conscious prompting. His memories of causing pain might be fuzzy, but his hands remembered well. They remained steady, waiting patiently to be put to work.

He stepped forward, standing over the dying man and then crouching down next to him, his boots just beyond the reach of the slowly expanding blood slick. Staring down at the man, he covered his mouth with his left hand in an expression of thoughtful study, letting the blade in his dangling right hand tap against the inside of his knee.

"You took something from me," he said at last, letting his voice fall to its deepest, most ominous timber.

The man on the floor had little to lose, and yet Riddick's voice inspired a notable shiver to pass through him. That calm, impossible baritone conveyed more menace than threats ever could.

"I was hired to sit on a cargo crate," the man gasped. "Private security for the company that owns the warehouse. If you have a problem, you should..." he cut off when the edge of Riddick's knife caught under his jaw.

"Lie to me one last time," Riddick encouraged.

The man's gaze froze on the blade holding him hostage. He didn't try to look up at Riddick. Didn't try to plead for his life with his eyes.

"The answer's yes," Riddick informed him. "Yes, if you tell me something useful, you might live to see morning. Talk to me or I'll make you talk to the sick piece of work standing behind me." He went with his gut on this. Conte should appreciate having another badass mother fucker to play off of while scaring the living shit out of some poor sap. Good-torturer, bad-torturer. A very effective tactic if used properly.

Sure enough, the man's gaze wandered over Riddick's shoulder, finding Dom standing three paces back with arms the size of small tree trunks crossed over his chest, his black demon eyes staring without blinking, the neutral expression on his face casually and effectively conveying 'this here is the badest of bad motherfuckers.' He looked like he might be one of those rare individuals who could tear off limbs and chew gum at the same time, and would take pride in proving it.

Just one good look at the Con-X caused the man to sketch a sign in the air to ward off evil. They couldn't have executed better if they'd planned it.

"You believe in God?" Riddick asked.

The man nodded.

Riddick smiled savagely, showing all of his teeth. "So do I." he said, pitching his voice low and pacing his words so he could watch the reaction each one inspired. "Even if you don't know where they took my son and daughter, I take comfort in knowing I'm sending you to a better place."

The man's mouth started to open, and just as it did, Vale's voice crackled over their headsets. "Guys, we've got an inbound convoy thirty men strong, coming in fast from the south side of the building and attempting to flank, heavily armed. I don't know how they knew we were here, man. I swear."

"Figure it out later. Right now, fall back to position 2," Conte ordered.

"We're not done here," Riddick protested gruffly. He was so close. He knew he could make this fucker talk.

"We are now." To illustrate his point, Dom pulled a pistol from his belt and double tapped their captive in the head when he walked past. "Don't worry, Dick, he didn't know shit." He disappeared into the darkness without pausing.

With a dead man under his blade, Riddick had nothing better to do than rise and follow after Conte. They moved quickly to a side wall with no door and seemed to be trapped. Tapping a command into his wristband, Dom initiated some sort of countdown that ended with hot sparks flying around the edges of a door-shaped area of the previously smooth warehouse wall. The sparks became brighter and brighter, reaching a white-hot level of heat that ate quickly through the thick alloy.

Dom walked up to it, kicking right in the center and causing the section to fall out backward, allowing them to walk out into the night, the hot edges of their newly formed door still glowing bright orange.

They walked away from the site of their slaughter without meeting anyone, but the sounds of heavy vehicles and men came to them from the other side of the building, at the entrance. The two of them quickly faded into the cover provided by the surrounding buildings.

A mile out, they waited on top of a rise overlooking the warehouse for all of two minutes before Conte turned and headed for the truck. Riddick didn't immediately follow, leaning against the side of an abandoned shed long since looted of all useful tools. Vale still hadn't made it back, and somehow it didn't surprise Riddick that Conte didn't seem to care about leaving his partner behind.

So much for Jack's theory that Vale served as a fill-in for Dom's absent son.

"Giving up on him already?" Riddick called after him.

Dom turned. "He should've beat us here. If he isn't here by now, they got him. The men stationed here were the dregs. They're testing us, trying to trap us."

Riddick's jaw tightened at Dom's flippant attitude. How could he be so fucking calm? They hadn't gotten anywhere, they'd lost a man, and the kids were running out of time.

"Back to square one, huh, Conte," Riddick noted sardonically. "Can't wait to hear the next brilliant plan you come up with."

Dom paused, turning around slowly to smirk at him. "I am brilliant. You've seen that for yourself, and you'll see it again before this is over. Maybe that's what pisses you off so much, Dick. You know, besides the fact I asked Jack to go with me instead of you all those years ago. I think you could've used the escape more than her. Guess I'm lucky, though. If I'd known she was just another ball and chain waiting to happen, I would've let her die. Might've saved you the hassle of becoming another statistic. You could've been great—if she hadn't gotten in your way."

Dom turned around and kept walking.

Big mistake.

Riddick watched him for a second, then calmly bent down to pick up a broken brick next to his foot. He hefted it, getting a feel for its weight. It was big enough to kill a man with.

He chucked it at the back of Conte's head with everything he had.

It hit the back of Dom's shoulder, but the Con-X still dropped to his knees with the impact.

Riddick approached warily, knife in hand, sensitive to the speed of the big man. They'd done this dance years ago in a back alley on another planet, and Riddick hadn't come out the victor then. This time he'd be ready to counter with deadly force if Conte decided to strike.

Dom's face had turned completely red, the veins standing out at his neck and temple. He huffed out quick deep breaths, struggling to keep his composure. Upon catching sight of Rick out of the corner of his eye, he turned to glare at him, holding his right shoulder with the opposite hand. "You really shouldn't have done that."

Riddick cocked an eyebrow. "Why not? Made me feel better."

Conte used his uninjured arm to get to his feet, keeping his right arm close to the vest. "Shit, you really, really shouldn't have done that," he said, attempting to shrug his shoulder. The barest hint of a grimace touched his face.

Riddick prepared himself to move fast, in case a retaliatory strike came. He needn't have worried. Pain seemed a greater concern to the Con-X than revenge. Dom repeatedly tried and failed to open his hand, and then flexed it into a tight fist.

After Conte finally straightened up, they walked on for a while. Riddick just behind Dom, watching him.

"Goddamn it, Riddick, you really are an asshole," Dom bitched over his shoulder. "You're just damn lucky I have ulterior motivation for keeping you alive, or I would've shot you for this."

Riddick only shook his head. "You're a fucking pussy, Conte. Be a man, and shut up."

Conte cussed unintelligibly to himself, before yelling back at him, "Would you hurry the fuck up? We need to get back to your place so I can get a copy of Vale's recordings. When we get to the truck, call ahead. Thanks to you, I'm going to have to talk to my wife tonight."

* * *

Author's Note: So, I'm hoping there are still people reading this story. I realize I've been very negligent about updating on a regular basis, but it's been a few chapters since I got a review and if anyone is reading, I really would appreciate hearing how I'm doing. I'd appreciate it ever so much! Thanks, and sorry for soliciting :-)


	21. Chapter 21

Dom grabbed Pace's elbow the second she walked in the Riddicks' front door.

"Put her down," he said, meaning Ticey. The girl was supported on Pace's hip, and Tice glanced curiously between Dom and her mother.

"No," Pace said, eyes narrowing. He'd begun walking her toward the kitchen, and she dug her heels in, stopping. Pace shrugged off his hand. "Hands off, Dominic," she hissed coldly.

Spotting a chance to impress her, Robert tried to step between the two, but his attempted intrusion snapped Dom's attention onto him, and Pace watched her 'friend' turn a sickly color of gray when Dom's most murderous glare pinned him to the spot, stealing his voice.

Robert's mouth moved, attempting to form words, but he choked on his own fear.

Pace felt a small turn of revulsion in her stomach. Robert was a nice guy, but he didn't have a prayer. He was subservient, quiet, and easily slapped down. Dom was two hundred and forty pounds of solid alpha male. He took what he wanted, left no prisoners, and he'd probably ruined all other men for her.

Pace could count on one hand the men she'd met who had a natural presence that could rival Dom's, and Riddick was one of those precious few.

The muscle in Dom's jaw flexed, but he finally returned his gaze to her. A little of the fire died out of his black eyes. "Come on, Pace," he said, exasperated. "My arm's about to fall the fuck off."

For the first time, Pace realized he held his arm close to his chest, his hand clenched in a fist that wouldn't relax. Every muscle in his forearm and bicep stood out; she could've easily traced every vein in his arm from beginning to end.

Decision time. Did she help him, or leave him to suffer?

"Okay," she finally said, relenting in letting Tice slide to the ground. Reaching around Robert, she took her husband's good arm, and led him toward the kitchen, making him sit down on a chair at the table.

"Your little boyfriend can't do this for you?" she deadpanned, tugging at the bottom hem of his shirt.

Dom attempted to raise his arms, and groaned. "Cut it off," he grunted, turning away from her.

It couldn't be easy for him, letting people see him like this.

Pace held out a hand in Riddick's direction. "Knife?" she requested. She couldn't tell how she knew he had one. Something about the way he stood reminded her of knife fighters she'd known during her time in the guilds, and the Resistance.

Richard Riddick was sleek with muscle, but not a single fiber so much as twitched at her request.

"I'm not going to be gentle, if it makes you feel better," she told him, not fooled by his lack of reaction.

A knife appeared in her hand, a straight blade perhaps six inches long with a simple black composite handle, and she returned her attention to cutting Dom's shirt off. Two minutes later, she stood behind him, examining a bruise darkening an area extending from Dom's right rotator cuff to his lower back. A nasty, surgically-straight scar encircled his entire shoulder, but that part she'd expected.

"Well," she said. "That's definitely not good."

"Can you fix it?" Dom asked.

Pace sighed, lightly running her fingers over the damaged area. "I don't know, Dom. There'll be a lot of swelling in there. I'm not a doctor. Cody's military trained; he might have a better chance...where is Cody, anyway?"

Dom's mouth firmed and his eyes flickered toward the floor. Was that guilt she saw in his eyes? Anyone else would've missed it.

"It's your system, Pace. You made the original adjustments. I want you working on it," he insisted, his voice already fading out as he struggled to bite back against the pain.

She sighed, brushing her hair back from her eyes. This wouldn't be easy. When she turned, she saw Mrs. Riddick gazing at her curiously, Kyle at her side.

"Mrs. Riddick," she began.

"Jack," the woman interrupted.

"Jack," Pace corrected softly. "I'm going to need to do an improvised surgery on your kitchen table, if that's all right with you."

"What's wrong with him?" Riddick asked, his deep voice throwing menace into the question.

Pace let her head drop a little. She had a hard time making eye-contact with strangers, even though her days of being a young girl on the run were many years behind her.

"I don't know when you originally met Dom, but in his early twenties he was captured by the Empire. During the struggle, one of the men shot Dom in the shoulder with a scatter gun, nearly severing his right arm from his body.

"They reattached the arm, but most of the nerves and muscles had deteriorated, or been damaged beyond repair, and had to be replaced by engineered tissues. Unfortunately, the engineered muscles in his arm don't contract with the same strength as the rest of Dom's body, so a fiber optic nerve center was placed in his shoulder and attached to his central nervous system.

"When the synapses in his brain fire, they send instructions for those muscles to contract. The fiber optic nerve center translates the firings and contracts his arm muscles at the proper speed and intensity. It's an ingenious system, but whoever programmed the original firmware got sloppy, and it made him lopsided."

Dom shot a sardonic glare in Riddick's direction. "When you hit me with that rock, Dick, you fucked up the system. Try tensing some part of your body for an hour or two, and see how much you like it," Dom added, ladling on the sarcasm.

Pace instinctively reached out to touch her husband's uninjured shoulder, effectively silencing his childish remarks. "If I'm going to attempt to fix the damage, I'll need to sanitize everything to prevent infection. The nerve center isn't deep, but I don't want him out of commission for weeks so it can heal."

Jack nodded. "Whatever you need, just let us know," she said, her eyes catching on the injury to Dom's back. The bruising was quite impressive. "What the hell happened to you, anyway?"

Dom glanced back at Riddick. "Let's just say we ran into some flying masonry," he said cryptically.

Jack's eyes narrowed, and she took a breath, as if to probe further.

Letting her intuition guide her, Pace decided it was a good time to interrupt Jack's train of thought. "Ticey, could you take Kyle upstairs?" Pace asked. "I have to lower the risk of contamination. Besides, Dom's going to be screaming things I don't want you kids to hear."

"Why would he be screaming?" Kyle asked, having appeared at her elbow. The boy intently studied Dom's injury, and before Pace could reply, he reached out to poke the colorful bruise covering a forth of Dom's backside.

Pace had never heard her husband yelp in pain. Without thinking, she stepped between him and Kyle when he whipped around, his fangs bared, a growl threatening from deep in his chest.

"He's a child," she reminded firmly. It shocked her that she still had the guts to try to rein him in. She'd tamed him once for a short time, but he'd had plenty of opportunity to regain his feral nature during their years of separation. Yet he submitted almost immediately to the hardness in her gaze.

Dom's eyes narrowed in her direction, but his fangs retracted. He growled to himself, stiffly turning back around in his chair.

"I wasn't scared," Kyle protested, even though by then his back was pressed against his father's large form.

Riddick gave his son a gentle push in Ticey's direction. "Think it's time you went upstairs, kid."

Kyle turned a pleading look on him. "Can't I stay here?"

Ticey walked over and took the boy's hand. "Come on, Kyle. We don't want to make Dom sick. If he gets sick, he won't be able to find Cam and Rachel, or Dallas."

Kyle relented, and a moment later the kids disappeared upstairs, Jack trailing not far behind, on her way to collect the supplies they would need.

Jack cast one last suspicious glance in her husband's direction on her way up the stairwell.

Again Pace surveyed the damage to Dom's backside, and shook her head. "We're going to have to get that swelling down," she commented to herself, looking around for a likely place to find ice.

"Over here," Riddick said, leaving the counter he'd been leaning against to lead her over to the refrigeration unit.

He showed her where to get ice cubes, and a bag to put them in.

"I don't know if I can do it," she confided while scooping ice into a bag.

Riddick shrugged. "He said you were good. Besides, you've done it before, haven't you?" he asked, noting that Conte had turned his head, subtly watching the two of them out of the very corner of his eye. Rick wondered how well Dom could hear.

Pace shook her head. "No. Not by myself. He's never gotten hit there, to my knowledge. If we're lucky, there won't be actual damage to the nerve center—just an aborted attempt by the system to reset itself. If there's damage, I won't be able to do anything but shut it down so the muscles relax. He'll have a mostly bum arm, but at least it won't be entirely useless. The other thing I'm worried about is if I'll have to slice him open like a fish. I don't know if I'll be able to find the switch for the wireless interface without proper lab equipment to locate it for me."

Riddick shrugged. He honestly didn't care one way or another. Maybe with the boy criminal wonder out of commission, he'd get a chance to do things his way.

Sitting in a chair across the room, Riddick watched while Pace and Jack laid Dom face-down on a sheet on the kitchen table, and carefully stretched pieces of thread across his bare back and shoulder.

Conte had a number of tattoos around the general area of his shoulder blade and lower back. Apparently when lines were drawn between various points on the tattoo markings, their combined intersection occurred directly over the interface's switch.

Jack added her hands to keeping the strings taut so Pace could determine the exact location of where she would cut, and mark it.

At last Pace had a good marking, and she proceeded to sanitize the area and make a tiny slice through the skin. Riddick watched carefully for Conte to brace for it; and wasn't entirely disappointed. No sound escaped—no groan or hissed breath, but the Con-X did blink rapidly once or twice, his head turned so he could see Riddick at all times. The look in his eyes bordered on accusatory. '_You put me on this fucking table. Nice job, asshole_.'

'_Any time_,' Riddick's steady gaze said in reply.

The victory was fleeting. So he showed Conte up? How did that compare to the shit storm Jack had thrown him into? With every passing hour, Riddick felt less attached to his sense of self. Like a wolf waking up one morning amongst the sheep, eating grass and wearing their clothes and wondering how he got there. Wondering more and more why he stayed with them. Did he owe them loyalty? When he and Dom returned home that evening, Riddick had sensed a change in Jack. She eyed him warily, when she thought he didn't see it. How much did she know about what had happened to him? Did she know how to stop it? Did she allow it to continue in order to keep him?

Did he care?

Riddick watched Jack dab blood from Conte's back in the wake of the knife. She'd been so helpful, running here and there for supplies, trying to please Pace and help put Conte out of his misery.

So in other words, yes, he did fucking care. Enough for jealousy to sear his insides, anyway. That felt real enough—but how could he know for sure? Before T2 he'd never trusted anyone, but he could always trust himself—his physical abilities, his mental faculties, and his perceptions. All three of those had been taken from him, and for what? He didn't even know.

Innately, Riddick sensed Conte had known the answer once. But did he know now? Somewhere along the line someone had reached into Conte's skull with an industrial grade brain whisk and scrambled the shit between his ears. Maybe the son-of-a-bitch deserved it, but that didn't leave Riddick any less up a creek.

Pace sighed with relief when after a few deeper and deeper cuts, the switch came into view. She switched it off, softly counted off half a minute, and then switched it back on. An access screen appeared on the virtual view screen in front of her left eye. Riddick could see the reverse reflection on the other side of her glasses.

"Request verification for access," the system said through her visor's visual interface.

"Pace Conte," she said slowly.

A second or two later the system responded. "Identity confirmed. Access granted pending confirmation."

"Dom," Pace prodded.

"Confirm," he said weakly.

"Access granted," the system responded, after taking a second to process.

Pace's gaze became detached, focused on the data readout scrolling down in front of her vision. "I think we're in luck. All the connections test positive for connectivity. Get ready to hold him down. Computer, download file 'beta-center executable,' password 'Dallas-Prize-362' to EPROM. Request system reboot on file."

The second the reboot began, Dom's arm went limp, twitching involuntarily. His entire back convulsed in a spasm that nearly upset the table, and he cursed a blue streak, the convulsions causing him to stutter. Pace and Jack had some trouble holding him down at first, but soon the muscle seizures ended, and he laid completely still, his breathing ragged.

"I think I'll take a drink now," Dom groaned, rolling to his side and pulling his arm in toward his chest. Blood streamed down his back, and Pace had to force him to lie back down on his stomach.

"Not yet. Let me put you back together," she chided, using a clean towel to mop up the blood from the shallow wound.

Jack stood back, her part momentarily completed. Their eyes caught for just a second, and then she looked away, watching Pace Conte fuss over her husband.

What did she feel when she looked at him? Fear he'd leave? Likely. Fear he'd turn on her? Perhaps.

Maybe he didn't know himself very well at the moment, but he knew Jack—knew she couldn't stand a mystery. Too many unknowns got the wheels turning in her head, and soon she'd start driving herself crazy with possible scenarios of what _might_ happen. It was only a matter of time before she asked.

Riddick turned to leave the room. He felt confident his former self would've laughed at this situation. Two kids kidnapped? A hot woman who worshipped him agonizing over whether or not he'd stay, when in reality she'd probably leave him if the kids weren't saved? Hilarious, Dickey.

_You know what the Boss man said in slam,_ Pre-T2 Riddick informed him. _If you're not having fun, lower your standards._

It'd be fun to see just how low his standards dipped before this klusterfuck was over.


End file.
